“Christine, this… really wasn’t necessary,” Nick mumbled, his bashful grin punctuated by hopelessly flushed cheeks. “You know that train could’ve gotten me to you in about ten minutes flat.”

            “I know, but… well, now it’s seven extra minutes I get to see you, isn’t it?” the Omega replied as she delicately strolled down the central concrete thoroughfare, her gentle footfalls only sending out the slightest of reverberations through the earth as a token of her fourteen-story stature. Her violet eyes, catching the fading sunlight with an ethereal additional shade of indigo, flashed between the leftover rush hour traffic far below and her rigidly poised hand, upturned and fenced by slender fingers. In the deepest valley of her palm, a being short enough to have passed through her pupil reclined against the fleshy crease.

            “I guess that’s true, yeah,” the young Beta chuckled, bracing himself on the cushioned dune of his carrier’s palm to remain steady. As usual, it seemed she’d recently applied a fresh coating of lotion to her skin, making the newly lubricated terrain a pleasure to sink into. Not to mention the sweet aroma that arose from the peachy ground. Today it was some variation of coconut-lime, a personal favorite of hers.

            Blinking, Nick could just barely make out the stars not smothered by the remaining sunlight, flickering between the sweeping chocolate locks that hung in such endless cataracts from Christine’s head.

            “Plus, the food’s ready and piping hot. We wouldn’t want it to get cold and push back dinner just in case the train hit a delay.”

            “Right, yeah. Don’t, uh, want that,” he agreed, and though he meant every word of it, the three-inch suitor couldn’t help but gulp down an anxious, sticky lump in his throat. Miniscule as it was, the barely perceptible ripple in his speech pattern was heard by Christine.

            “You’re saying you don’t want to squeeze every last possible minute out of tonight?” the Omega giggled, flashing her passenger a gale-hurling wink from on high. A facetious quaver playfully entered into her syllables. “All you’re doing is meeting your girlfriend’s kids. I’m sure anyone else would be completely at ease.”

            “Yeah, no biggie at all,” he laughed, stroking the ridged latticework of the Omega’s skin. “I’ve got it in the bag.”

            “I’m sure you do,” Christine said with such faith it couldn’t help but convince Nick for a few extra seconds. The road hit a curve, and her eyes fell away from her mite-sized boyfriend as she traced the slant accordingly, planting each sandaled foot with practiced grace, one in front of the other. To compensate, her fingers curled in higher above over the Beta’s head as a veritable tidal wave of muscle and flesh.

            The only impact felt by the young man, of course, was a subtle twitch beneath the skin of her palm, which he answered by stroking his hand along the living ground with a special tenderness he knew it took a kind of superhuman sensitivity to appreciate.

            Which she no-doubt possessed.

            “Just about there now,” she noted quietly, not so much for Nick’s geographical information, but more as an emotional buffer in case he wasn’t quite prepared yet.

            After all, he’d certainly laid eyes on the Omega’s coliseum of an apartment numerous times, and ridden by it on the train just for a glimpse when he felt lonely in times past. He’d even been inside a few times, when Christine was certain they’d have time alone. Its cavernous halls and sky-touching pillars never ceased to gob-smack, with furniture that could’ve constituted entire city blocks for someone of Nick’s size. Still, he was no stranger.

            Somehow, though, this trip felt different. And indeed, rightfully so.

            “Have you, um… talked to them much about… me?” Nick proffered, knowing this was probably not the time to bring this up when Christine was so nearly at home. “…us?”

            “I’ve… done my best,” the Omega said, putting on a bravely reassuring smile as she cupped her hand up closer to her chin, and suddenly the limited stars Nick could make out between the threading ropes of her brilliantly luminous hair were exchanged for the adorable, ageless features of her face filling in the void. It definitely wasn’t a bad trade.

            “You know I don’t mean… um, what I mean is…” the Beta fumbled. “If it doesn’t go… you know, great tonight, it’s not… well…”

            “Always my little pessimist, aren’t you?” Christine crooned as she finally stepped away from the road, taking an especially long stride to clear the roads as she planted the synthetic rubber sole of her footwear into the grassy plain of the Omega residential zone.

            “Maybe just a realist,” Nick said, cursing himself for being so down on the evening already, but simultaneously bracing himself for an infinite number of setbacks awaiting him inside his former teacher-turned-girlfriend’s home.

            “Mm-hmm,” the Omega murmured, her chin closing in nearer to the heel of her hand, those massive lips puckering expectantly into a pink, furrowed wall not unlike a cave opening composed of irresistibly plush flesh. “How’s this for real, then?”

            Nick’s jaw hung limp as Christine’s lips swelled toward him, accompanied by a rumbling squeak of friction from within her gurgling maw. Her mouth, as tall as his house even in their furrowed, amorous state, emanated warmth and cinnamon-scented moisture as the unfurling kiss invited him into the fold. Happily, the Beta let himself stumble forward like a trust fall directly into the plump lower lip.

            Indeed, Christine’s mouth caught him like an errant crumb, adhered to the glossed skin and bolstered ever so cautiously against the give of her palm. Nick’s feet dangled numbly off her bottom lip as the rest of his body burrowed against the wall of pillowed skin, seemingly flushing a deeper rose hue with every second he spent grappling with its folds, feverishly kissing and sucking it back, and even digging his microscopic teeth into the powerful onslaught of puckering flesh and congealed saliva.

            At last, when the Omega was satisfied with this penultimate gesture before their trek into uncharted territory, she brushed the tiny body of her lover down against her palm, setting his legs back to creased earth while her lips clenched in, allowing him to slide away.

            “T-That was… pretty real,” he gulped, wiping a hand down his moistened cheek.

            “Good,” she said, blowing him another air kiss as she marched up the final trail leading to her house. “Any time you get nervous tonight, just try to think about that.”

            “That… might not be appropriate for any time,” Nick commented, looking down to his decidedly tighter crotch area post-kiss.

            “Hmm. Maybe not,” Christine chuckled. With her free hand she extended a pinky finger tip into her occupied palm, the digit’s end easily twice as tall as her date for the evening. Rivaling the contact with her lips for surgical precision, she brushed the gridded pad of her finger along the length of Nick’s body, pausing for just a second longer over the Beta’s waist with the soft, absolute peak of her finger, and let a broad smile unfold across her lips.

            “You want your kids to see me like this?” Nick muttered gratefully, planting another kiss on the surface of his girlfriend’s fingertip as he savored the feeling of her monumental digit stroking on the increasingly insistent nub between his legs.

            He couldn’t say for sure if he’d seen the woman this utterly relaxed and even adventurous in their relationship, and when they were mere paces away from greeting her two children, to boot, though he also wasn’t one to complain, especially when she seemed so confident in tonight’s success. As long as she was happy, he supposed it wouldn’t be so terrible to try and be cheerful as well. Clearing his throat, he added: “Not that they’d probably be able to see it unless they got real damn close, but…”

            “You’re just so concerned, aren’t you?” Christine sighed, and at last let her finger drift away from his mildly aching lower regions.

            She couldn’t help but fawn just a little harder over him at this continued revelation, her already soft violet irises twinkling beneath the shadow of the porch. He’d always been on the timid side, more respectful than anyone she’d met of his age and probably of his decade, something that had drawn her to him back when their former teacher-student relationship had become one of friendship and steadily blossomed into something more some twelve months back. She’d had a feeling this would be a difficult moment for him.

            “Not if you aren’t,” Nick said simply, internally swearing to do his best to remain truthful in that vow. He stared up at the looming countenance of this gorgeous, mountainous creature who, despite her infinite power and eighty-year seniority over him, had somehow been tricked by fate into requiting his feelings for her.

            A calm settled into his skin in spite of the gnawing nerves. If anyone deserved to have a peaceful meeting of romantic and familial worlds, it was this woman, who’d been through a journey of such strife in the past four years that Nick doubted most could ever fully recover from it. He owed it to her to keep himself together and personally ingest each and every ounce of awkwardness as he met her children, both of whom were uncomfortable-cough-inducingly six and four years younger than their mother’s beau, respectively.

            “That’s the spirit,” Christine glowed. Kissing the tip of her finger, the Omega bowed the digit back down toward her infinitesimal companion and brushed the lightly dampened tip back along his body. “Keep it up and maybe you’ll get the full tour of the house later.”

            “Tour?”

            “You know… maybe kitchen, living room, closet… bedroom…” she drawled nonchalantly as she wrapped an enormous hand around the obelisk of a doorknob and gave it a twist.

            “B-Bedroom?” Nick repeated, trying not to sound too perversely optimistic.

            “I said maybe,” she reminded, though the second sultry wink she gave him indicated he wasn’t at all wrong to hope. The century-old woman brushed a knuckle along her cheek, the vibrantly hued and laugh-line-creased appearance of which suggested she wasn’t a day over thirty-two, and nudged open the front door. “Roll your eyes if you want, but I’m going to say it anyway: just be yourself. They’ll love you.”

            “Am I ever anyone else?” he joked, swallowing the last gasp of a protest as the light of the Omega’s foyer washed over him.

            “We’re here!” Christine called out, her lovely voice booming in echo through the halls of what, to her, was a modestly sized abode, but to Nick was nothing short of a geological canyon of plaster and crown molding. He’d only been in a few Omega-scaled buildings in his life, and he could still feel his breath stolen away on this particular occasion. Which wasn’t ideal, as he only had so much breath to spare, with so much of it expended on nervous energy as he watched the two people he needed to impress more than anyone else in the world stride down the hall.

            Oddly, the one he noticed first was the Alpha: Christine’s daughter Sylvia, a girl who, to hear her mother tell it, spoke in songs and regularly spilled liquid sunshine from the ends of her hair. Certainly if he’d seen her towering above him on the street, the Beta would’ve been able to recognize her as a family member to Christine, if not her genetic clone, miniaturized down to five-foot-something. Everything from the sheen of her locks to the sparkle of her skin was there, though the luster of the Omega’s violet eyes was traded for more of a silver hue. An inheritance of her father’s, Nick assumed. Eventually, though, the location she was seated on, specifically the gigantic opened hand, spread into Nick’s consciousness.

            It was only really then that the Beta took notice of Bennett, Christine’s twenty-year-old son, who, at what the Beta could only passively judge to be somewhere in the one-hundred-sixty-foot neighborhood, was by far the largest being in the room. With his angular bone structure, sun-baked tan, and a grizzled chin consumed by the intentional fuzz of a five-o’clock shadow, Bennett suggested more the son of Paul Bunyan than the son of the Beta’s dear former teacher.

            It took more than a few blinks for Nick to recognize that he was a mere flick of Christine’s fingers in distance away from the younger man, as the scope of his staggering corpus made the Omega appear more as an optical illusion. And then just a few more blinks after that were required to process that the living cliffside of the twenty-year-old’s face was contorted into the most derisively shriveling of sneers as he squinted at the speck seated in his mother’s expansive palm.

            Nick knew that look. It was a look he was much more accustomed to seeing on a considerably smaller scale, plastered on the faces of Alphas who probably wouldn’t have minded if he became ensnared in the business end of a farming thresher. Worn as it was on a face so large it might’ve fallen out of a billboard, it nevertheless was the same look.

            “Sylvie? Benny?” Christine exhaled, straightening her back as she extended the stage of her hand forward. “This is Nick.”

            “Hi, Nick,” Sylvia said with a gentle wave, seemingly having trouble looking directly at the miniature man nearly swallowed up by her mother’s giant palm creases. Her polite smile relaxed Nick sufficiently enough to put some gusto into his own emphatic wave back in a bid to be seen.

            “Hello… there… guys!” he bumbled, hating himself for the eager-beaver lucidity of his tone, and immediately smacked his lips closed to try again. “It’s good to meet you both.”

            “You too,” Sylvia responded, at last looking directly at him as she kneeled across the gangplank of her giant brother’s fingers.

            Bennett, still, said nothing. If anything, his lips seemed to thin and pale, as if they were being retracted back into his stony jawline.

            “Well… shall we?” Christine said brightly, obviously sensing the mounting tension and half-heartedly hoping they could literally outrun the social gracelessness if they kept on the move. She took a step forward in the direction of the dining room hearth beyond, nodding at her son to follow. “The table’s all set.”

            Nick, meanwhile, diverted his gaze back up to Christine as she walked, doing everything in his power to shrug off the feeling that Bennett was putting the full brunt of his house-sized brain into willing a tactical complement of missiles to bloom right out of his seething eyes and zero in on the three-inch-tall visitor.

            Maybe, the Beta considered, he had been just a little premature in declaring that he wasn’t concerned.

Tines like train tracks descended from above, the light of the distant dining room chandelier glinting off their silver. Nick's lip hung open as he watched, a little more than awe-struck. It was easy to see he could've easily stretched his body between each spike of the fork.

            The prongs of Christine's utensil plunged into the wet brown terrain that occupied the plate, swirling sauce and releasing plume after plume of steam from within the mess of synthetic protein mixed with the punctured sides of cooked animal.

            From his elevated platform next to Christine's plate, the Beta couldn't help but watch boggle-eyed through the clear fencing, taking in the casual mealtime carnage. Her plate alone was large enough to be the cul-de-sac by his apartment. She mopped up gravy and flecks of mashed potato that could've just as easily made the tips of snow-peaked mountains for Nick, then slowly drew the ravaged bundle away from the surface. Those fingers that had so easily offered a fortress of flesh and muscle to Nick on the way here now just as effortlessly grasped a trident between them and brought up approximately one quarter of a cow toward her mouth above.

            The meat passed over her lips into the darkness, beyond where the Beta could even see. Her mouth closed around the tines, their metal streaking quietly along her teeth within before she set about chewing through the bite with strength more than capable of gnashing brick and mortar. Faintly, he could make out the crunch of the animal's tiny bones in his girlfriend's cheeks.

            She apparently noticed his dwindling stare on her, because once she'd gulped down a couple hundred pounds of food in one normal-sized swallow, Christine turned her head to her date. Her fingers brushed through seeming miles of chestnut hair.

            "Everything taste good, Nick?" she asked. She smiled, her violet irises luminescent under the ceiling's glow.

            "Yes. Yes. It's... delicious," he said. "Thank you."

            She nodded, eyes flashing to the opposite side of the table to confirm her son was still brooding just as aggressively as last she checked, and returned to eating.

            Nick never got sick of watching her plant the fork in the landscape of food and draw another mouthful out. Or watching her do anything, really. He'd always been amazed by the scope of any given activity completed by an Omega. It was like continually watching a fleet of hot air balloons lift off for the very first time. Wonderment and awareness unrolling in one. The way space stretched forward into the beyond was never quite the same again after experiencing scale of that kind.

            Somehow it was different, though, when he knew someone of such titanic proportions personally and felt very strongly that he'd like to spend the foreseeable future in her company. Comforting. Protective. Also surprisingly titillating, if the sudden pants tent he found himself sporting was any indication. It meant the world and then some to know she was willing to test her relationships with her children at this table by bringing him before them. He was not only small enough to be mistaken for grit under their mother's fingernail, but young enough to be their older brother. There were more than a few hurdles to cross. As self-conscious as he felt now, he knew her anxieties had to be worse.

            Nick watched Christine's fork hover back over the plate and draw up another stabbed clump of meat. In this particular moment, as he sat by her powerful left hand upon the endless plain of white tablecloth, any distraction was welcome.

            Especially when there was a young man with arms like time-weathered mountain ridges seated across that cloth plain, shoveling in a herd's worth of salt-and-peppered livestock. Bennett had not yet blinked even once as the foursome took their dinner in near-silence, and the Beta was beginning to feel a tad unnerved.

            Nick looked down to his own plate again. He took the fork and knife in both hands. Sylvia had been kind enough to set out his food for him, given the significant challenge it would've presented for both her mother or her brother to prepare a dish not much larger than a grain of coarse salt to them.

            He delicately carved away another shred of meat from the frankly massive chunk he'd been given, and pondered just how many of his entire portion's worth Bennett might have caught between his teeth at this particular moment. The Beta was willing to wager at least thirty-seven, but it was hard to say. It was an awfully large set of jowls grinding literal tons of meat and potatoes as the corresponding eyes shot withering glances at least once a minute.

            "Did everyone have a good day?" Christine spoke up with more than her already substantial pep. It was the third time she'd attempted to initiate a conversation between Nick and her children, and she was not ready to give up yet. "Sylvia?"

            "Yep," the Alpha said from her own six-foot-long dinner surface that still fit easily upon the Omegas' aircraft carrier of a dining room table. She picked at the mashed potatoes, stirring them into a near-liquid state but never picking any up. Nick was pretty sure he hadn't seen her take a single bite yet.

            "School was good?"

            "It was okay, Mom."

            "Bennett?"

            The young Omega grumbled, his mouth still full of food, but didn't look up at his mother across the table. Instead he picked up a cup of water that could've doused a forest wildfire. He chugged it then slammed the towering glass down again.

            Nick's dining platform trembled. His own glass toppled, splashing into his plate of food.

            Bennett's fist remained squeezed around the glass cylinder, the ends of his bulky fingers flushing white.

            "Hon?" Christine said softly. "Is everything all right?"

            "Perfect," he grunted, his fork already en route to the plate again.

            It was bizarre for Nick to watch his wise lover keeping so serene in the face of her tempest of a son. Not that he blamed the kid for his attitude; he couldn't help but imagine he might feel the same, were their places reversed. Still, Beta tantrums were just a little less intimidating than Omega ones, in the same way that a sneeze was a little less intimidating than a hurricane.

            "Is there anything I can do?" she asked.

            "No," Bennett said, his gaze burning through the translucent wall separating him from the three-inch dinner guest. His thumb pounded on the rim of his empty water glass. "But I'll let you know."

            Christine bit her lip, momentarily defeated again, and looked apologetically down to Nick by her hand. He nodded in answer, giving her a conciliatory smile, and took a deep breath.

            She was giving this her all. He owed her the same.

            "I hear you're in the school musical, Sylvia," Nick said. Invisibly he felt his voice amplifying out of his tabled tower toward the eighteen-year-year-old Alpha and hoped he wasn't making a mistake.

            She looked up, this time in the Beta's direction, her face a blank canvas.

            "Cabaret, right?" he continued.

            She shrugged and looked back down to her plate, recommencing the endless stirring. "Yeah," she mumbled. "It's not a big deal."

            "Not a big deal? Aren't you Fräulein Schneider, though?"

            The girl looked up again, her gaze more focused this time. "Yeah."

            "Well, that's pretty important."

            "Not really," Sylvia countered. "She's just the old lady who owns the boarding house."

            "But she sings the first number after the opening. I have to think that makes her at least kind of a big deal."

            The Alpha raised an eyebrow. "You've seen it?"

            "Only... I don't know, fifteen times?" the Beta said animatedly, encouraged by the girl's unveiled curiosity.

            "That's funny. It's a super-old show," the Alpha said, her gaze shifting up to Christine's face. "Older than Mom, even."

            A warm chuckle rumbled above Nick's head.

            "It is pretty old, yeah," he said. "But back in my home town, my mother used to do a lot of local theater. She played Sally Bowles a couple times, actually. Once even at a place just down the road from the Tyler Convention Center-"

            "-the Starguise Theatre, yeah. Huh," Sylvia managed, cocking her head. "That's pretty cool."

            The Beta felt amazingly calm. He was only subconsciously aware of both Omegas looming beyond, one watching him with disinterested disdain, the other with increasing adoration.

            "For sure," he said. "But I bet you'll have their Fräulein Schneider beat."

            "Uh-huh," she said, blatantly unconvinced.

            "That probably sounds like I'm trying to make you feel better, right?"

            "A little."

            "I'm thinking you're a better singer, though."

            Sylvia looked like her eyes were on the verge of rolling all the way around. "You haven't even heard me sing."

            "I've heard your speaking voice, though. And I know you're in the choir. Your pitch changes but it never breaks at all, even when your voice is low. You know what I mean?"

            "I guess," she said.

            "You're... what, a soprano? But I'm guessing alto when you need to be. Like, maybe you can hit a high A on a good day, but you've got the transition to middle C down-pat any day of the week. So you probably have to cover the regular altos sometimes because you can blend."

            "Y-Yeah," Sylvia responded, the hospitality returning to her softened voice. Nick thought he could make out the ghost of a smile on her face.

            "Trust me, I can catch the little things in voices. With ears this dinky, they have to be good for something, right?"

            The girl stifled a giggle, embarrassment flashing through her eyes for just a second, before she let up and allowed a grin to cross her lips.

            "Yeah," she said. At last her fork dipped into the plate and ladled up her first bite. "I guess they do."

            Out of the corner of his eye, Nick could just make out Christine absolutely beaming.

            "Well, that's nice," Bennett muttered loudly. "That's really nice."

            "I think so, too," the other Omega said sweetly but through gritted teeth, silently warning her son.

            "No, I mean it," the boy said. "He just knows her so well. It's really cute. Is it my turn yet, though? Is it my turn for him to tell me what I'm really good at?"

            The Beta felt his stomach rotating like a pig on a spit.

            "Bennett-" Christine sighed.

            "No, I mean it. I'm really curious," the Omega fumed. He planted his fork and knife on the table with a seismic clack on opposite curves of the plate, then rested his chin inquisitively on his fist, gazing directly into Nick's walled-off glass tower. "C'mon, man. I'm waiting. What am I into?"

            "Well... I, uh... I know you... do a lot of work outside the city, building up facilities by the shorelines."

            "Oooh good one. It's like you looked into my brain and just pulled that right out. It's like magic."

            "Bennett," Christine repeated.

            "Hey, I'm just "giving him a try," just like you asked us to do, Mom," he fired back, his voice never rising in volume above the same cold drone.

            All the same, it made the Beta shiver.

            "I think that's enough," she said.

            "But we barely know anything about each other yet. I mean, how else is he going to convince us he just loves Mom and only wants the best for her?" Bennett scowled. He looked back to Nick. "That's the goal, isn't it?"

            "Why do you have to be like this?" Sylvia piped up at last to her brother, surprising Nick with the defensiveness of her tone. "He didn't do anything to you. He's just trying to be nice."

            "Didn't "do" anything? That's not a surprise. How could he from the little tic-tac box she keeps him in?"

            "Shut up," the Alpha snapped.

            "When I'm ready," the Omega said.

            "Hon, do you need to take a break from this table? Go for a walk, maybe?" Christine offered, the severity serrating her syllables. She'd risen to her feet, long fingernails alighting defensively mere feet away from Nick's speck of a table. "Because I've had just about enough."

            "Yeah," the larger Omega snarled. "I think I do need a break." He too stood to full height, easily dwarfing his mother as he leered above the table, which, despite its seemingly-infinite stretch of white cross-stitches in Nick's eyes, looked like a footstool by comparison. Brow stiffened, shoulders spread wide, fists knuckled into iron, the young man was a force of nature.

            The Beta's throat fell dry.

            "Have fun playing house with cool new tiny Daddy," Bennett bellowed back into the dining room as he stormed toward the porch. The door slammed cataclysmically behind him, rattling the walls from their stone foundations and up to Nick's paltry knees, which were quaking now harder than ever in his life.

            This wasn't going so well.

The turquoise specters of the veins in Nick's eyes still floated in his vision after they'd passed beneath the blaring light of Christine's porch light. Having settled down near the center of the Omega's palm as she held him level with her chest, the Beta had since wandered semi-delirious with doubt toward her fingers. The light cracked between the thick spires of her digits like a beacon, and he soon made himself comfortable at the altar of one of her fingers.

            The evening had fared roughly as well as he'd expected. Which was incredibly disappointing, to say the least.

            "Hey. Are you okay?" The whispered voice boomed from above.

            Nick could feel Christine's powerful gaze on the back of his neck. She'd obviously noticed his head had lulled involuntarily down against the base crease of her ring finger in a bow. Fitting, really, he decided. He knew she would accept none of the apologies he felt it was necessary to make now.

            "That was... well..." Christine continued. She'd slowed her pace.

            "Yeah."

            "It's all right," she reassured. The great wall of her fingers curved inward and upward, collecting Nick nearer to the center of her palm again. "Don't think about it too much."

            The Beta obeyed the muscular trajectory of his girlfriend's hand, following the fresh hill formed in her flesh and making himself a more obvious visual target at the epicenter.

            "It's hard not to."

            "I know," she sighed. "Maybe it was too soon. Maybe I should've done more, tried to explain... more."

            "I'm not sure how much that would've done," Nick said. He leaned against the steeper incline of Christine's cupped palm at the basin. "I know I can't really... understand what he's going through... what either of them are going through... but I don't think he's wrong."

            "What do you mean?"

            "Just... what we're doing together, it's... I..."

            "Nick..."

            "...I must be a lot to take in," the Beta groaned, realizing how absurd his wording sounding as soon as it was out. He was a human crumb to both his girlfriend and her son. "I'm only a few years older than him. Hell, if one of us was a different size, we might've even known each other at school. Might've been friends."

            He regretted this particular comparison almost immediately.

            Christine nodded, the bob of her towering head momentarily blotting out the moon. Her face was mostly obscured by shadow as she gazed down at him with renewed vigor.

            "Do you think I'm too old?"

            Nick batted his eyes, the acid in his stomach churning.

            "No!" he defended. He gritted his teeth and squared his shoulders like an offended cricket. His felt anger roiling up inside, aimed solely at himself. "That's not... that's not what I meant. I'm sorry. Please, Christine..."

            "Don't apologize," she murmured. By now she'd stopped completely in her tracks, the Omega path between the highway lanes still humming off in the distance. "I know you didn't mean it like that. But look at me. I've been alive more than a century..."

            Nick squinted, tracing the limited geometry of her face that he could make out in the dark. Her violet eyes were glistening, and he knew it wasn't just their usual luster. Like all Omegas, she certainly didn't look her age. In fact, at most she appeared to be about five years older than him, so it was always a minor internal shock to return to this revelation.

            "...and you're still at the start of your life. I... I taught you. And I know it must be hard sometimes not to still think of me as just your professor, as the giant old woman lecturing at you. So I understand, too, if you're-"

            "Christine, stop." Nick didn't mean it to sound quite so much like an order, but this amazonian angel of a woman had been a guardian for him just as much as a lover. She deserved to be protected, including from her own obviously rigorous self-doubts. For all her city-block-height and earth-moving strength, she had never been more vulnerable to the Beta's eyes than now. Under the tricky influence of the dim lighting, he could almost convince himself he was watching her walk across her own hand, standing at three inches herself, laid raw before him.

            The Omega's lips ceased their dance above. They pursed together, her tear-welled eyes zeroing on Nick as her hand brought him closer to her chin in a soft rush of night air. She waited.

            "You were my teacher. But then you weren't. You were my friend. My... well, my best friend, let's be honest."

            She nodded, her dark hair rustling above.

            "And I just need you to know, that I don't care about how much time we had before we met each other. I don't care how old you are, how small I am, or if your children don't believe it's right. Because... because I do. I believe it's right, that you're amazing, and that I... I..."

            "Yes?"

            "I love you." The syllables came easier than he was expecting. Like a tune he'd had stuck in his head for months and only just now remembered the lyrics. "Do you hear me, Christine? I LOVE YOU."

            A lilting giggle echoed through the silence of the Omega neighborhood. Christine tossed her head back, reveling in the exponential outpouring of joy originating from the three-inch individual standing defiantly in the landscape of her hand.

            "I hear you." Her voice returned to its usual gentle confidence as the pink line of her lips reopened, descending toward her palm. "And I love you, too."

            Nick was nearly swallowed up into the storm of suction. The mere intake of breath was enough to adhere him to Christine's lower lip. She quickly corrected his position, though, bearing him nearer to the center on the slick slope of kissably-soft flesh. The tip of that godlike red tongue resurfaced, dragging him comfortably forward on the stippled surface. Again and again her mouth tightened and relented, smooching the Beta an inch into the dark, warm maw and then releasing him back onto the sticky terrain of her lower lip. All the while, the young man could do nothing but surrender his body to the pull of her affection and lay as many of his own microscopic kisses upon her skin as was humanly possible.

            When the Beta, now soaked with Christine's saliva and lip gloss and sporting a painfully obvious tent between his legs, was finally released from the thank-you kiss, he flopped onto his back. From here, he could so easily stargaze, so high above the ground and his previous life experiences, but all he wanted to do was stare down his queen. She'd turned nearer to a street light, now allowing her glowing features to shine again for her miniscule audience.

            And God, she was a sight.

            Without warning, Christine pivoted. At a brisk pace, she made her way backward on the path, in the opposite direction from Nick's house. Her sandals slapped aggressively on the underside of her building-sized peds down below, every footfall an echo in the Beta's ears. She'd made it several distant steps before her date got his bearings, wiped the moisture away from his eyes, and put some words together.

            "What are you doing?" For an instant his heart thumped faster against his ribs. He wasn't used to uncertainty in Christine's hands. "Where are we going?"

            "Just trust me," she requested softly, her irises yearning so deeply it made Nick ache in his bones. "You do trust me, don't you?"

            "Of course," he breathed, hardly letting her get the last word out.

            "Then just sit tight for me," she said with a reassuring smirk, blowing him a last air kiss as her fingers darted in overhead, sealing off his view of the night sky and limiting his exposure to the ridged ecosystem of her hand, and then suddenly nothing at all but what he could feel beneath his feet as she closed him inside her monumental fist.

            The seismic motion returned almost immediately as Christine marched off, and the Beta could sense gravity shifting and robbing him of his footwork again. Not that he particularly minded.

            It was an assuredly unique sensation for Nick to be utterly enclosed in an Omega's hand, one that once incidentally caused his heart to flutter just by nature of the brunette beauty's towering volume and the warm, open darkness he suddenly found himself in not unlike a bizarre dream on a hot summer's night. Now that he'd had multiple chances to experience this particular brand of absolute protection, he'd learned to calm down and even enjoy the brief interlude of sensory deprivation in exchange for being surrounded on all sides by the flesh of his girlfriend's hand.

            Of course, his heart still fluttered, but for entirely different reasons.

            The closer Christine's fingers closed in around him, in fact, the more comfortable Nick became, even as her titanic digits ate up the space he had to move. Not that he would've used that space himself, of course; he essentially gifted all bodily agency to her in these circumstances.

            And what a gift it was. The segments of her feminine digits, padded and plush, expanded as her knuckles bent her hand into a gentle fist and compressed him into her encircling palm. So small he was by comparison to each trunk-like extension, his entire body could easily become lost on the width of any individual finger, even when he stretched his arms as high above his head as possible in the vertigo of her twisting appendage.

            His entire body would bounce softly into the loping crevices of her fingers, but never sliding between them, as she maintained a strict barrier of tender flesh on all sides. The Beta was always easily collected back into the center of a finger and pinned playfully in sequence by each into the creased center, before he was released again.

            To an outside observer, it would've appeared Christine was twiddling her fingers in a rippling pattern against the heel of her hand, a mere side effect of an intense brainstorm. To Nick, it meant his entire existence was squeezed into the bubble within the Omega's caring hand, the walls formed by her curved palm and bobbing fingers always evolving just as quickly as his meditative inhalations of the coconut-scented darkness. Though, from the sound of her voice before, it did indeed seem she had a brainstorm going as well.

            The atmosphere warmed again. Hearing the smooth creak of the sliding door opening and shutting, Nick pressed his ear against the nearest crevice of Christine's digits, unsure exactly which part of her finger, or even which finger, he was nuzzled again. Either way, from this position, he could hug her skin, try to listen for exterior clues, and casually straddle the girth of her finger against his increasingly tight pants. In short, it was ideal.

            "Hey, Mom." The voice was faint, probably coming from a nearby Alpha walkway on the wall, but Nick immediately recognized the sound as Sylvia's.

            "Hi, honey."

            "You're back quick."

            "Nick decided to take the train."

            "Sorry that went so suckily."

            "Don't worry about it right now. Did Bennett come back yet?"

            "No. I texted him but he didn't say anything. He probably went to his "spot," so I bet he's not coming back for a while."

            "All right. Do you need anything?"

            "No. I'm tired. I was just gonna go to bed and listen to my music."

            "Sounds good," Christine said. "Good night, sweetie." Nick felt a shift in gravity again that jostled him softly from his prime eavesdropping location, but he quickly recovered in time to hear his girlfriend planting a motherly smooch on her daughter's head. He couldn't help but grin, continually enamored of her love for her offspring.

            "Ewww, Mom! Your breath still tastes like the dinner," the girl blathered, laughing as she spoke. "Ever hear of toothpaste?"

            "Sorry. I just can't help it," Christine said jovially. The authoritative rumble of her footsteps below started up again. "I'm going to go to bed too, okay? Try not to think too much about tonight for now. We'll talk about it more after we've all had some rest."
            "Mom?"

            "Yes?"

            "Did... did Nick hate us? Me and Bennett?"

            The Beta was only mostly dumbfounded. What a question. Him? Hate them?

            As a single unit, the Omega's fingers all enclosed inward just a little further, hugging Nick in an incomprehensible direction between a yielding ceiling of sweet-smelling palm and Christine's delicate though skyscraper-like digits. A hope.

            He kissed her flesh back almost immediately in answer as the warm cavern of the Omega's feminine fist gave way again.

            "No, honey," Christine said. "I don't believe he did."

            Good.

            "Okay," Sylvia said, her uplifted voice descending to a whisper as her mother moved further away. "I'm glad."

            The calming quakes of Christine's lumbering footfalls lasted for another minute. From his rough knowledge of the Omega house's layout, Nick was able to imagine the woman was just now passing through the living room, toward a separate short hallway. He heard the lush weight of her sandals on the family room carpet far below traded for the rubbery clack of them against the artificial wood of the alcove, and then finally the return to the softness of the carpet as she opened and closed another door.

            Swiftly, the young man's estimated mental map of the home reached an unknown. The low blare of a bedside lamp crept across the mounds and creases of the Omega's hand as her fingers slowly uncurled. Nick felt himself reorienting to the pull of earth's gravity, momentarily remaining clamped into the underside of Christine's index finger joint before rolling back into the center. He clambered hand over hand toward her thumb, ascending closer to the pad of her finger with utter faith in her balance.

            "I promised you a bedroom tour, didn't I?" Christine questioned cheekily as her boyfriend laid down on the ovular rings that made up the tip of her thumb. She extended a hand over the relatively modest-sized Omega quarters. "I keep my promises."

            "I thought you said maybe a tour," he chuckled, tickling a finger against the grooved ground.

            "All right, all right, I keep my implied promises."

            "You certainly do."

            "But that's not the only reason we're here, of course."

            "Oh?"

            "No."

            "What's the other?"

            "I'm going to convince you..." she said quietly, sinking down onto the edge of the bed. Her other hand rose into view over the horizon of her wrist. A finger curved into the neck of the fabric that hung over her shoulders and tucked it to the side, exposing more of her lustrous skin to the lamplight. "...that I believe it's right, too."

Nick's lower lip hung limp from his jaw. It was still nearly impossible to process where he was and what he was seeing given who he was, how small he was, and what had taken place tonight.

            He sat in the sunken, lunar terrain of the Omega bedspread. Like an ocean, the blue fabric had rippled and bucked as Christine's monumental fingers tugged and smoothed it out in order for her three-inch room guest to stand upon it without stumbling. When he'd finally been placed upon it, released with some regret from the end of the woman's beautiful thumb, he couldn't help but cast his eyes over the endless expanse of the bed, a place he hardly dared imagine he might ever see since the first kiss he'd shared so improbably with his gorgeous former teacher.

            However, his attention was quickly directed elsewhere. Behind him he heard the determined clunk of Christine's sandals being discarded against the wall, her bare heels now drumming on the carpet below as she ambled gently back toward her date.

            With a wink, she reached into her pocket and retrieved her phone, clicking through a few screens and finally setting it down on the mattress, far enough away from Nick that he hardly felt the weight of it affecting his stance. The speakers of the device began to pulse with soft sound with nearly the strength of a concert stage by comparison to the Beta.

            Timpani, then Spanish guitar, the volume turned so low it wouldn't have registered anywhere else in the world but Nick's tiny ears. He felt his heartrate adjusting to the music as he watched Christine take a few momentous steps backward, moonwalking on her toes.

            She smiled. Those lips curved back and forth, driving Nick just a little wilder than he already was as he settled into the song she'd chosen, and then her fingers rose again. Pinching at the airy fabric of her colorful top by the shoulders, she lifted it with opposite hands. The billowing length of her outfit seemed almost to change hues, from green to blue and then to crimson as it caught fragments of light from the lamp. Her hips swayed smoothly in time with the music as the top was pulled over her head, her long hair whipped back into freedom. Swiping the cloth over her toned tummy just once like a matador's flag, the Omega tossed it to the wall. The rush of wind from her throw just barely tickled Nick's skin.

            He gripped the dense fabric in his fists, feeling the heat rising in his body.

            Christine's hands journeyed to her back, taking their time for her fingers to crest luxuriously over the undulating masses of her breasts, still confined in her bra. She seemed intent on remedying this, though. After a full rotation, allowing Nick to witness the descent of her palms along the slope of her lower back, her fingers ascended again, pinching at the clasps of her bra in one smooth motion and releasing them with abject skill. With her back still facing her enraptured audience, Christine cupped the now-unsupported bra in both hands against her chest, giving the straps time to cascade softly off the blades of her shoulders.

            Her rear end, a veritable valley to Nick even at this distance, swayed side to side in time with the increasing tempo of the music. The fabric of her silken panties hugged the deepened curve of her derriere on each alternating swing. Any given wrinkle of the taut cloth would've presented a dune for the Beta on the makeshift beach of his beloved's curvaceous form, but he was getting it all, all of it, in one view. Nick had resorted to sinking down to a sprawled position, so weak had his knees become. It was still just about impossible to process what he was being shown.

            Clearly satisfied now, Christine slowed the sway of her majestic butt to a waltz and gracefully flung the discarded bra off to the side of the room. It landed, like the rest of her articles, as gently as though it was carried by feathered wings.

            Frankly, Nick wasn't quite sure anymore if this ethereal being offering so much of herself to him wasn't capable of such witchcraft. How else to explain the sheer magnetism of this moment? Certainly she was beyond gorgeous, the most beautiful creature he'd ever laid eyes on in his life, but this was something more than anything he'd ever felt before. His eyes were truly hers: he wasn't looking anywhere else, couldn't stand to blink for terror of missing a single instant of the show. His cheek lulled against his shoulder as he struggled to find the support to hold himself up, so liquid had his muscles become.

            When Christine finally turned around, she kept her palms delicately shielded over her areolas, her fingers gradually fanning out to allow Nick increasing square footage of space to view the glorious, supple mountains protruding from the landscape of her body. Every shift of her digits revealed another thin shadow veiling the milky-caramel of her skin.

            Her broad lips widened again, a low rumble of lilting feminine laughter booming from her throat.

            "Well?" she cooed. "Why don't we go ahead and get you out of those annoying little clothes of yours?"

            "H-Huh?" Nick hadn't responded so much out of surprise, but mere necessity to recalibrate human speech after the divinity he was witnessing.

            Christine giggled again, uncovering her left breast so her fingers could instead convene at her lips, playing with the corners. "You look like you're going to poke right through them if you wait any longer. And I won't have your ruined belongings on my conscience."

            "O-Oh..." The Beta looked down, having not even realized he was sporting probably the largest pants tent of his life. He was almost ashamed to see it, feeling it might've fractionally devalued the wonderment he was feeling at seeing the Omega before him in all her fullness. Not like there was anything he could do about it, of course.

            "Don't you worry," Christine whispered softly, and suddenly Nick realized she was standing directly above him again, the looming terrain of her engorged breasts hanging magnificently above. She'd moved toward him without even shaking the bed. Not a single millimeter. "What kind of host would I be if I didn't offer you to make yourself comfortable?"

            "O-Oh... I... I d-d..." Nick managed. He was a blubbering mess all over again, just as useless in conversation as the first time Christine admitted she reciprocated his feelings for her. It was a small source of personal pride that he'd become so comfortable chatting casually with a being large enough to fit him through her pupil, but now, that experience was wiped away, if only temporarily. Somehow, he didn't mind.

            "You're so adorable when you run out of things to say," Christine commented. Her right hand descended, briefly blocking out the view of her towering bare torso above. Long, softly carved fingernails glistening with opaque lamplight, her digits curved around Nick in a fortress. "Just relax. And we'll slip you into something more comfortable."

            The Beta felt his last remaining muscles transform to mush. There was no tension or resistance left in his body as Christine collected him with immaculate tenderness between the pad of her index finger and thumb.

            For a few beautiful instants, Nick was almost lost entirely between the plush, ovular terrain of his girlfriend's fingertips. He felt safer than perhaps any other position in his life, definitely more so than any solid ground he could stand upon. It was only when he could just make out those promising violet irises through the crevices of flesh that he realized she'd lifted him up to eye level.

            "Well, hello in there," she murmured. The laugh-wrinkles around those swimming eyes deepened.

            "H-Hey," he mumbled. He leaned his head back against the nearest ridge of Christine's thumbpad. His gaze extended briefly up the winding curvature both above and below him, so tall and almost incomprehensible, he was sure he wouldn't know which way on her enormous fingers was up, down, or sideways if he didn't have those eyes magnetizing his gaze back outside. And what a gaze it was.

            The coconut-lime of her lotion was surrounding him again, intoxicating in the best way possible. In this moment, her skin felt softer than the ultra-fine stitching of his own clothes. Nick pondered whether it was actually possible to get high off the planetary atmosphere of Christine's hands, her fingers controlling his movement and keeping him safe from the world below for indefinite time. It didn't sound so bad.

            So lost had the young man become in his loose dreams, he didn't notice the presence of Christine's left index finger now entering his orbit until it was a mere breath away. Her fingernail hovered nearer, the gleaming keratin of it teasing inches closer to him.

            The Beta nearly lost his air, then, not from pressure but surprise, when the Omega's fingernail lurched forward and snagged the hem of his shirt. Or rather, his shirt became snagged on the bulwark of her fingertip, and as her eye narrowed with intense and unrelenting concentration in what she was doing, Nick surrendered fully to the act. He lifted his arms up as best as he could within the gentle vice of building-sized fingers and gridded flesh.

            As skillfully as anything the Beta believed he'd witnessed in life, the Omega guided his shirt up his torso with mechanical confidence. Not a single scratch or bruise was even close to bestowed by the thick platform of her nail, despite its contact with his body, or the knowledge that a single accidental spasm of the tiniest muscle in the massive woman could flick his entire body off into the void.

            The shirt came away and, true to her sultrily delivered vow, Christine deposited her date's garment down on the bedside table.

            Nick enjoyed the increased contact, his chest against the ringed terrain of the Omega's fingertips on either side. Goose bumps rippled in several successive waves along his skin. However, at the return of her fingernail into the peachy canyon where he currently resided, he knew it was only going to get better.

            Another low giggle echoed from beyond. Christine's fingernail descended this time after carefully poising itself at the center of Nick's body. It wasn't even shocking this time to the Beta when the improbably bulky extrusion of her nail hooked fully down into the waistline of his pants. He didn't have the mental capacity now to try and question how she'd managed to do such a thing. It was just happening, and as he watched his pathetically tiny pants become lost in the creased sea of her palm, followed by his comparatively molecule-thin underwear as well, Nick realized she'd indeed kept her word again.

            He didn't think he'd felt quite this comfortable in a long time.

            "Well, well, well..." Christine sighed with a playful grin. Her fingers drew nearer to her eyes, the violet beauty of each flanking him as she studied the insignificantly sized being between her fingertips that nonetheless commanded so much space in her heart. "Looks like I was right. Another minute in those shorts of yours, and who knows what might've happened?"

            "Y-Yeah..." Nick said. He simply let himself be: savoring the feeling of the warm bedroom air on his skin, the glow of Christine's eyes, and the creamy smoothness of the skin that surrounded and encapsulated him enough to feel utter security despite his distance from the earth. "Good call on that one."

            "Thank you," she said. "I thought so, too."

            Her fingertips lowered now, past the elegant slope of her nose and over the mound of her upper lip, until Nick was face-to-face with the mesmerizing hills that formed her gently closed lips. A simple shift between them, however, and an opening appeared in the pink flesh, a whisper of hot air whistling out and surrounding Nick as she blew on him.

            He felt a tingle on the back of his scalp.

            "Just hold tight," she requested, emanating another comforting blast of sweet, warm air.

            Nick held back a chuckle at the irony of this, eyeing the confidently firm walls of finger skin on either side of him, and patiently awaited the next motion. It was akin to watching a shifting of continental lines of Christine lowered herself onto the bed,  knees sinking into sheets, her other hand braced to the pillow, though her fingers kept so still that the Beta's body hardly felt involved. Only the barest tremors ran through her flesh, as though inviting Nick into the bed. She didn't address him again until she'd lowered herself fully onto her back, the flowing reams of her dark hair streamed in all directions across the linens.

            The Beta felt gravity sliding around him again, his legs helpless only for half a muted gasp before he felt his feet touching down onto the ground, a mere inch below. With utmost care, Christine's fingertips parted and left him, perfectly separated at perpendicular angles to avoid the slightest abrasion against his naked skin.

            Then Nick took notice of where she'd placed him, which admittedly didn't take very long once he'd lifted his head and gotten a look at the twin cherried peaks of the mountains on either side of him. Though the mass of them was spread more evenly now that she was lying down, it in no way diminished the scope of them. He was standing right in the valley slope of her breasts.

            As if seeking confirmation that he was indeed where he was, Nick looked beyond the canyon of mighty Omega tits and met Christine's gaze again as she examined him on her chest, her head propped comfortably against a frilled pillow.

            "I hope you don't find this untoward," Christine said, a kinky glint in her eye. Her smile broadened again, her tongue coyly lapping at the corner. "But I've got one last... assignment for you."

            Nick's heart skipped a beat, his throat dry. His fingers idled anxiously, desperate to please her. He wouldn't have blinked now even if a gale-force storm blew through the bedroom.

            "Anything."

            "Oh, so eager," she boomed. "It's simple, really. Come to my finger..." The Omega's index finger extended, floated high above in midair, and came to rest at the very tip of her left nipple, rosy and erect as her digit circled the destination. "...and I'll give you the final exam. But don't worry. This is only based on completion."

            Merely taken aback for the briefest instant, Nick realized with an internal shrug that he was harder than ever now at this teacher-themed talk. She certainly knew where his buttons were. Who was he to object if the love of his life had some additional lessons for him to learn?
            He pressed his hand into the side of her mountainous breast, experiencing the larger-than-life pulse.

            Her heart was pounding just as fast as his.

Nick's hands communed with tantalizing earth. His fingers explored the texture of living terrain, palms flattened into skin as he propped his legs into the opposite side behind him for balance. A weight as slight as his could've hardly said to have contributed at all to the loping contours of the gentle mountain before him. Yet it did, ever so infinitesimally.

            Christine's chest ascended and fell in such slow revolutions as she steadied her breath to nigh imperceptible pace, it might've well been mistaken for the machinations of the actual planet, if Nick happened to live among his Omega goddess's breasts rather than the solid ground below. After a few minutes of standing upon her body, he'd achieved his sea legs, and could only notice her enormous inhalations now when he paused, planting his cheek down against the curvature of her towering bosom.

            Their heartbeats, of course, had synced long before their breaths. Practically as soon as Nick pressed his hand into the slope of her, they were in time with one another. Her body heat, too, was shared as generously as the other rhythms felt through her flesh. Nick's brow warmed, his limbs already alive with tickling fire that extended tenfold into the area between his legs. Once he'd suitably aligned himself between the very base of Christine's massive breasts, his hands pressed to one side and his feet to the other, he gazed up above.

            It was a harrowing task laid ahead, too be sure. He'd scaled some impressive heights in his time, sprinted some long distances, much further than this, but it was different nonetheless. This wasn't a challenge to be overcome, this was Christine. A first chance to make an impression in an arena where he'd yet to encounter her. Spry as he felt, and all the more so for the pulsing virility of this night, it was intimidating all the same.

            But the Beta had no intentions of letting his teacher down. Not when she'd given him an assignment so important.

            He couldn't help but crack a smile again at the thought of Christine's wickedly dirty foreplay jokes. It was nearly impossible to imagine them coming from the same woman he'd once met for the first day of Conflict Studies class and been nearly struck dumb with a single glance from those violet eyes and the crease of her laugh lines as she smiled on him.

            Just then, a gift from above, as he'd come to expect from his dear. Just that little extra push he needed to succeed. A billowing lock of dark amber and chocolate hair pinwheeled in shimmering dance down from Christine's dangled fingers above, the river of it diverted from her crown. The velvety strands brushed along his cheeks and encircled his legs as the flared tip of her tress was unspooled around the Beta's body.

            Nick draped himself in soft, delicate ropes of Christine's hair. He weighed each strand he passed over his palm, so slight yet insistent in its strength as he softly coiled himself into the falls. A single hair was enough to hold him, and he had hundreds. There was no way he wouldn't make the top now.

            Secured in his support system, Nick emerged through the opposite brush of silken curtains compromising the Omega's mane. Then, pressing backward on his heels, the Beta launched himself into the steep incline of Christine's naked breast, at the peak of which, her finger patiently awaited his arrival.

            Hand over hand, foot over foot, he moved, Christine's hair hooked over his shoulders and under his knees. No matter how physically capable he was of this climb, especially with her help, in this particular moment, there was the ever-present threat of embarrassing himself completely. He only hoped his miniscule appendages padding ticklishly up her skin didn't cause the woman to recoil with unavoidable irritation, or worse, be reminded of the sensation of a bug making itself at home on her flesh, and thus remove her finger as a result of poisonous second thoughts.

            But so far, she hadn't. Another blessing, really.

            Nick paused only briefly, alighting on the side of his love's breast, holding still with digits sunken into the shallow give of her luscious skin, lock of hair hugged to his cheeks. In the dim bedroom light, tinted by a lampshade the huge of winter-rosy cheeks, Christine's body took on a nearly russet sheen. Unable to help himself, the Beta dipped his chin down against the hill and planted a wet little peck. Gentle, at first, but when he heard the rumble of encouraging chuckling beyond, he went in for seconds. He languished for another minute, planting kisses long and deep, jaws squared to the firm topography of the Omega's lavish body, his gnat-like tongue in mania. He only hoped she could feel it, at any possible level of sensation.

            When he finished there, Nick pressed one last biting smooch into the ample canyon wall, and continued the ascent. More than halfway up, he glanced to the side past the flowing hair and toward her distant face on the landscape. He was both surprised and pleased to see Christine had laid her head back down against the pillow, her broad lips parted, straining the release of hot air between her teeth. A sigh, lilting and delighted for all its quiet.

            He was nearly there now. Without stopping, he dragged his lips along in a thin line up the eventually grounding slope, coming easier and easier now as he moved with a renewed vigor. He gripped dark strands in each fist, held like icepicks in a glacier. This last kiss ended when he stumbled confidently back to a stand at the summit of Christine.

            The citadel of her index finger rotated on the altar of her nipple, cautiously teasing it into a state of continual rise. Concentric spirals of her fingertips barely dared make contact, only touching down with the same strength as Nick's hands planted on her warm skin. Christine's areolas rippled with pinprick goosebumps at the transition from the softer auric tone of her skin to the dark, unripe cherry of her nipple. It was a miniature mountain unto itself, surrounded by the same low, delicate terrain which culminated at the tip.

            The proffered streamer of hair fell from Nick's dumbfounded knuckles and around his ankles as he looked on, hardly able to keep his throat clear enough to swallow at the sight which laid ahead.

            "Someone's coming along nicely," Christine whispered. She withdrew her finger from the nipple, letting it drape luxuriously in the air over Nick's head like an inverted Creation of Adam for just a moment before she laid her hand back beside her cheek on the pillow. In the interim, Nick raised his fist above his head, reaching out for her, knowing there was no way he'd actually make contact unless she allowed him, but attempting it all the same.

            "Waiting for something, cutie?" the Omega questioned. "I thought you'd like to show me why you're the teacher's pet."

            Marooned alone, then, on the rounded apex of the mountain, the Beta marched forward, determination and roiling arousal alike crackling in his eyes. It took most of his self-restraint to avoid simply flinging himself at the regal perimeter of her nipple upon the tenderly rutted skin. Instead he crouched down, squeezed his palms together, and took hold with his most dexterous extremities. Hands fastened around a ribbed cluster of flesh like taste buds, his own tongue and teeth sampling and needling the gorgeous knot of her nipple.

            Like electricity in the back of his throat, he winced at every fresh flavor of her skin, gnawing with increasing ferociousness. His tiny fingers ringed the cushy, plated rim of her nipple, timidly at first, but after hearing another few elated huffs of air from her lips, he was encouraged for more of a full-body assault. Her goosebumps pricked ever higher, lifting him up as he stretched across her vulnerable bulge of rosy skin.

            The pop of moist suction somewhere in the softly lit void. Skin against skin. The liquid whisper of it burrowed in Nick's ear, but he was too preoccupied with the finishing touches of his first greeting with this part of Christine. The paranoid threat of humiliating himself with a misplaced finger or a lick too long was still omnipresent, the spine-tingling arousal of it all besides, when he was probably already accomplishing so little in terms of stimulating Christine's senses into action. What was he, in the scheme of the entire ecosystem which built up her magnificent person? An insect, a mite, a crumb?

            He received the best reminder possible in the oncoming seconds that, yes, small as he was, he belonged to the correspondingly loose rules of gravity and physics as a crumb. Skin on his back, gridded and wet, brushed along his bare shoulders so lightly he almost didn't recognize it. Her hair hadn't returned.

            Instead, the circular pad of an extended digit, painted with sticky fluid, plastered to his back. In no time, the cooler air above Christine's breast adhered him to the tip her lovingly sucked index finger. The last lingering hairs which looped loosely around his calves came undone like ribbons. Then, unlike the crumb he'd almost imagined himself to be in his state of defeatism, he was plucked with utmost care, attention, and purpose for the owner of the finger. She lifted him up, glued softly to her finger.

            He watched his hands fall away from the beloved altar of her nipple, sinking lower in space, until he was swooping above her neck, over her chin, watching the seemingly boundless terrain of her flesh create itself beneath his dangling feet. Just as fittingly as the crumb he now was so grateful to emulate in size, he touched down in a double-crested valley of red, so broad on either side he couldn't have had a prayer of stretching across either width with his entire body. Christine's lips, spongy and seething with heat, below his unworthy heels, where she'd placed him with that angelic finger from on high.

            There was no further need for direction on this specific assignment. A steady tide of warm air exhaled from Christine's nostrils ahead, her mouth utterly still as Nick dove into the deeply riveted divide between her upper and lower lip. The soft valley, pungent of salt and coconut from where she'd dragged her finger through the glistening nectar of her cheeks, held firm beneath his prostrate body. The Beta trembled. All but overcome with the necessity of this moment, Nick gathered himself into a fetal curl and pressed his lips into the curved crimson cavity that was his keeper's own.

            And just as Nick hoped she would, Christine kissed back, but yet again snapped his expectations cleanly in half, in the same way an incorrect flinch of her lips might do the same to his legs. In this room, right now, the Beta's perception of what could be achieved between one so great and one so small was now a constantly remolding theory rather than a certainty.

            The Omega's lips shifted in a smooth seismic roll, parting by the millimeter. More than enough pressure in answer to Nick's make-out offer, lips smeared with her scent and saliva, each side stronger than anything the Beta could imagine. Then her tongue emerged. By less than a foot, the majesty of her worming muscle budded through her lips, directly below Nick's body. In the same stroke, his tiny frame was bunched into the tip of Christine's organ, his own lips and tongue in harried frenzy. Nick writhed in mounting sexual agony as he slid from side to side on the curve.

            Then it was gone again. Christine's tongue slurped back into the globe of her beautiful head, filtering Nick's body back onto her lips. In the same subconscious gasp he felt the momentary heartbreak of that wild sensation receding, even as he returned to his previous business wrestling with his lips. But just as quickly the red beast returned, in fuller force this time, hot and streaked anew in liquid. Her every taste bud pulsed beneath Nick, a last rhythm to collect. She seemed to sense his approach toward that assignment completion she'd hinted at earlier. Her own guttural breaths, her lungs clawing for more, reared somewhere beneath Nick's body as he repeated the ascension upon Christine's tongue, then the gentle comedown on her lips.

            The Omega's own massive hand had long ago vanished to a lower region of her body. At one point, Nick caught in the corner of his sight her index finger tempering the still-erect nipple, but after a few more minutes, her arm had traveled even lower, out of his sight and certainty, though he couldn't help but know, and feel grateful. This lesson was nearly finished.

            And finish it did. The shiver was catastrophic. So spectacular, Nick couldn't help but roar with body-numbing ecstasy into the cavern of Christine's mouth as her tongue slid back inside a final time. Her own body, so strong and ever-steady, released a pair of convulsions which reached her face, followed by a hand-molded moan, rising like an obelisk of sonic joy from down in the abyss of her lovely throat.

            Foolish as he felt to think it and with no intention of speaking his mind aloud, as Nick rolled over, supported in the small of his back by Christine's puffed upper lip, he couldn't help but grin like a giddy kid at his mind's automatic response, suppressing a snort of delirious laughter.

            Class dismissed.

Nick took another sip of coffee from his Beta-scale mug, his forearm quivering. He hadn't been able to stop grinning like an idiot the entire morning. Really, it had probably begun last night, at the graceful conclusion of his nocturnal games with his elegant goddess of an Omega. Even after the hormone rush of the evening had settled down, though, he still burned hotly with the afterglow of the strides made the day before. There were revelations far more crucial than the pleasures of infinite flesh he experienced on Christine's body.

            He loved her. She loved him. Love. Loving. In love. Was this what it felt like to be a little schoolgirl plucking petals and reaching the last one on a positive note? Nick didn't even care. He'd happily wear that label, because he intended to live inside this feeling for as long as he was allowed.

            "How is it?" The beautiful violet-eyed Omega's voice boomed across the gingham expanse of the breakfast nook from where she sat and over to the walled-in tower table in which Nick was perched.

            "Amazing," the Beta blurted dreamily.

            Christine suppressed a giggle behind her fingers, and shook her head. "I meant the coffee, you jokester. And I can guarantee you there's nothing amazing about that brew. But thank you for saying so, anyway."

            Nick blushed, but took another slurp of the beverage to cover it up; momentarily, he forgot that Christine likely couldn't distinguish the rosy glow of his skin from that distance across the kitchen table. She wasn't wrong about the coffee, but everything tasted gorgeous this morning regardless. That smile still couldn't be slapped off his lips.

            "You're amazing, too," she added warmly, winked, and popped a grape over her teeth.

            Wallowing in the wonder of Christine's gaze for just a minute, the Beta let his sight wander over to the nearby hallway of the Omega complex. He didn't want to sour the mood, but couldn't help but feel concern creeping in at the corners of his joy. As perfectly as everything had gone after he and Christine admitted their feelings to one another, there was still a certain amount of emotional collateral from dinner.

            "Did... did Bennett..." Nick coughed.

            Christine bowed her head knowingly, and rested her cheek on steepled fingers. "He came in late, after you'd fallen asleep. I heard him in the hall. It's all right."

            "Okay. Good."

            The Omega extended her arm across the wide field of the kitchen table. Her broad fingertips alit at the edge of the cupped translucent tower, gripping the edge just slightly enough for Nick to feel the tower go completely still in her grasp. With a gymnastic balance, Christine drew the Beta station across the tablecloth. Nick watched the checkered blue and white patterns pass in a blurred rush below, then give way to the fluffy terrain of the Omega's house robe descending well below the table's edge. He gulped, and looked up at her gravely serious face again.

            "We just have to give him time," Christine reassured. There was still worry cracked in her tone, but she was sincere, and Nick knew she truly believed this. "You already won one of them over. I'm not sure if it was clear to you, but... last night went as well as it could have. I know that."

            "Thanks," Nick sighed, and nodded. He pressed a hand against the nearest porcelain wall of Christine's fingernail which extended all the way into his tower circle. "Time heals most wounds. Even this one. Or something like that."

            "Now there's the Conflict Studies graduate I know," Christine teased. Her eyes darted to the hallway too. "I'm going to go check on Sylvie, and let her know breakfast is ready. You all right to wait here a minute?"

            Nick opened his mouth to make the Beta-patented now where could I possibly go joke, but decided to let it stand. Instead he just smiled again and kissed the glassy wall of Christine's fingernail, which withdrew gently from his cupped domain. The Omega ascended from the table and tiptoed across the floor toward the bedrooms, but even marching on the cautiously poised balls of her titanic feet, Nick felt gentle tremors rising all the way up from the ground to his table. Not that he minded in the slightest; if anything, he was so used to it, he might have been troubled by the lack of a minor earthquake when his love was doing her best not to jostle him.

            For a few minutes, the Beta downed the rest of his semi-mediocre coffee and let the grin return fully to his face. He sampled the breakfast treats Christine had put great care into shaving down for him from a whole waffle, which she'd specially pressed in the iron just for him even after he insisted he'd be perfectly content receiving a crumb from her own plate. But that was just her.

            From somewhere in the void behind, giant footsteps managed to rattle the Beta's puny flatware again. These landings were still gentle and measured, yet undeniably more seismic than Christine's balletic strides. Expecting to see his dark-haired angel returning again from around the corner, the air in Nick's windpipe instead snagged like a fish hook at the sight of none other than Bennett lumbering up to the table. The sky-high Omega took a seat right beside the place setting which Nick's tower occupied.

            "So you stayed the night," Bennett grunted. He didn't acknowledge the Beta with eye contact, but instead snatched an apple from the fruit bowl on the table and crunched a loud bite.

            "I..." Nick stammered, briefly weighing the idea of insisting he'd just returned for breakfast after an evening in his own bed, then thought better of it. The cheesy time mantra flashed in his mind. "Yes. I did."

            At least ninety seconds of staid silence passed between them, punctuated occasionally by the Omega munching the fruit. Nick was reminded of the tension in old cowboy movies right before the bandit got blown away by the sheriff. In this case, it wouldn't be difficult for him to be literally blown away by a flared nostril on a body that large. To his credit, Bennett at least had the courtesy not to glare daggers through the walls of the Beta's cup. After a while, though, this ignorance troubled the Beta just as much as a sustained staring contest might have. In that situation, he'd at least know precisely where he stood with the guy.

            This was a man who was hardly two years past being a boy and who also happened to exist at such indescribable scale that just about any part of his entire body could've rendered Nick a crimson dot on the domestic landscape with hardly a feather's weight of pressure. During dinner the night before, the Beta had recognized in those luminously pooled irises a kind of aggressive fire he'd only recognized before in the eyes of Alphas: drunken jerks without filters, upper-crust elders sneering at the taxpayer-sponsored Beta walkways, and kids indoctrinated by their prejudiced parents mime-smashing things in their fists right before his eyes.

            "My mom looks different," Bennett mumbled.

            "What?" Nick said, feeling dumb for having to ask an Omega to repeat their voluminous words, but he was expecting an entirely different spiel to arrive.

            "She looks better. Happier. Since... you," Bennett continued gradually. He tore away another hunk of apple, then set it down on the table and turned his head at last to look at Nick. "Since you got together with her."

            Well, that was something, at least, to hear the Omega even vocally acknowledge the relationship existed at all. Nick considered that a monumental step in itself. Anything else in the way of progress after last night was just icing.

            "I'm glad," Nick said, not knowing how else to respond.

            "You don't have to say the rest. How you just want her to be happy, that's your only concern, you don't want to make anyone feel weird. Yada yada yada."

            Gulping, the Beta nodded and kept his lips shut. Was Christine coming back soon?

            "I don't hate you, you know," Bennett murmured: his quietest admittance yet.

            That much was a surprise. Nick would've been willing to bet his life savings the opposite way.

            "Oh?"

            "No. And I don't hate... you know, Betas... either. I wouldn't be able to, even if I tried, and even if I tried and I did, I couldn't do anything about it. The way we're brought up, I'm... never mind," the Omega continued. "I did try, though."

            "I believe you," Nick said carefully. "Not that I blame you, either."

            "It's just that I had to watch my mom left alone once already," Bennett said. He lurched his back in over the table, his face just a few inches away from the edge of the tower. His words were low enough that Nick was certain only he could hear them, despite the echoing capacity of an Omega's boom. "Do you... can you even..."

            The words were lost in the narrow jump between where Nick stood at the edge of the slanted window wall, but in the fumbling interim, he clocked the rest of Bennett's answer in his eyes, because those eyes were the only thing Nick could see, and they completed the Omega's embarrassed reach out of grief. In the space surrounding those very same pupils, Nick still saw Bennett's fire, but lacking the same hate and heat of before: he didn't see the hundred-fifty-foot man, but only the boy who'd had to bid goodbye to his father far too early.

            "Yes, I can," Nick said. The phrasing of whatever Bennett tried and failed to say was irrelevant; he was understood all the same.

            "Thank you," the Omega said. The clear-cut gratitude sounded a touch strange coming through his graveled timbre. He raised a hand in front of the tiny tower, clearly unsure how to react next. "How, uh, do you do handshakes? Not that I haven't shaken hands with Betas. But, uh, how do you, exactly..."

            Nick couldn't help but laugh, which luckily was read correctly in the spirit of mirth rather than mocking, because against all odds, Bennett cracked a smile. The Beta stepped back from the wall, giving the Omega plenty of room. "I just make it work. Bring it in, man."

            The giant smirked, and extended his pinky index finger down into the fenced-in Beta-friendly kitchen zone. The end of his thick digit curled against the ground, standing significantly taller than Nick all on its own, but it was enough. Feeling as though his good mood might never be cut short again, the Beta reached forward and gripped one of the raised spiral rings of Bennett's fingerprint to awkwardly shake it.

            "Is this really how all Betas do it? You just have to squeeze a piece of skin?" Nick wondered aloud, as he did his best to keep his finger still for the gesture. "That must get fucking old."

            "It really does," Nick agreed, and to his tremendous surprise, he joined in reverberating laughter with the Omega. At least, he was pretty sure he was laughing along with him; Bennett's chuckle was so loud and infectious that it sealed off all other sound within the cup. In the midst of their shared moment, Nick let go of the young man's finger, and only then did the Omega withdraw his appendage.

            "What's... going on out here? Is everyone doing well?" Christine said, suddenly standing in the doorway at the sound of the thunderous snickering. Her brow was furrowed with concern, but upon seeing Nick still standing in the cup and laughing along with Bennett, she quickly softened. In her left palm, her three-inch daughter perched in her pajamas, rubbing her eyes, but perked up at the sight of her brother and Christine's new friend seemingly goofing around.

            "Yes," Nick sighed with relief.

            At her usual respectful pace, Christine rejoined the pair at the table and set her smaller child down on the surface beside the tower. The Beta shared a nod with Bennett, warmed to his core, then locked again with Christine's purple gaze above; she was happily struggling to grasp the magnitude of the bizarre little miracle still hovering around the family. So he did his utmost to put her fears to permanent rest.

            "Everything is... good."