#Lectures from the Lectern

[silvercrow0117]

Republicans are already trying to float the idea of messing with the 22nd amendment so Trump can run for a third term. Call your congressperson and tell them to vote no if a vote comes to pass on this. Fuck Donald Trump, and fuck the cronies who stand by him

[barnesonly]

── ⊹ ࣪ ˖ Lust ˖ ࣪ ⊹ ──

professor!bucky barnes x reader

summary: You’re a literature student. He’s your English professor — brilliant, composed, and entirely off-limits. But the more you write, the more he notices you. And what begins as admiration quietly unravels into something far more dangerous.

word count: 11,6k

WARNINGS: 18+ explicit content, MDNI. curse words, mutual desperation, age gap, dirty talk, praising kink, fingering, oral (f receiving).

Part 1 | Next Part

You never really cared about grades. Not in the way people expected you to, at least.

What you cared about—truly, deeply—was the work. The texture of language. The way a well-written sentence could hold you still like a breath trapped in your chest. You loved writing, even when it didn’t love you back. Even when you stared at the cursor blinking on a blank page for hours, waiting for some elusive thread of brilliance to pull from your brain.

So naturally, when you got to college, you threw yourself into literature like it was a religion. You took every reading-heavy course you could find, submitted essays like confessions. And at the center of it all—without meaning to, without quite realizing—was him.

Professor Barnes.

James Buchanan Barnes to be exact. Your English professor.

He was the kind of man people noticed. Not just because he was handsome—though he was, undeniably, in a way that made your stomach twist. There was something else. A quiet intensity. The way he spoke, like he wanted every word to matter. Like he loved the stories he taught with a kind of reverence that made you feel something.

You didn’t mean to stare at him in lectures. But you did. Sometimes you’d forget to take notes, just listening to the way his voice dipped low while quoting a line from The Waste Land, or the way he’d tap his fingers—ringless—against the edge of the lectern when he was thinking.

And at first, it was nothing.

Just a crush. Harmless. Everybody had one. He was hot and he liked books. So what?

But it didn’t stay harmless.

It wasn’t just that you thought about him too often. It was the way your heart tugged when he read your essays aloud to the class—not by name, but you always knew it was yours. It was the way he looked at you sometimes, like he saw you, beyond the student mask. It was the slow, creeping realization that it wasn’t just a fantasy. It was him.

The moment you realized it was bad?

It was a Tuesday.

You’d just handed in your midterm essay the week before—something about grief and memory in Mrs. Dalloway, which you’d poured a piece of your soul into without meaning to. You weren’t expecting anything back yet. Not really. He usually took his time marking.

But that day, at the end of the lecture, Professor Barnes stood behind the desk with a stack of papers in hand. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow—again—and the ink smudge on his thumb made your chest ache in a stupid, ridiculous way.

“Some of you handed in… surprisingly good work,” he said, a little smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t get used to me saying that.”

A few people laughed. You didn’t. You were too busy watching the way his eyes scanned the room—until they landed on you.

And then he said your name.

Like it meant something.

He held your paper out across the desk as you stepped forward. There were at least three people behind you, waiting to get theirs, but time moved weirdly slow. You reached out to take it—and his fingers brushed against yours.

Barely a second. A blink. But you felt it everywhere. Like heat crawling under your skin.

You didn’t look at him. You couldn’t. You mumbled something like “Thanks” and bolted back to your seat, heart pounding like you’d done something wrong.

You sat down, throat dry, fingers trembling slightly as you unfolded the paper. The front had his neat, tight handwriting in the corner: an A.

But it was the margins that ruined you.

Underlined passages, a few careful notes in blue ink.

“This line in particular—gorgeous imagery.”

“You really understand Clarissa. That’s rare.”

And, scribbled sideways along your final paragraph:

“You write with so much feeling. Don’t lose that.”

You stared at the words. You read them again. And again. Something bloomed in your chest—hot, sharp, a little terrifying because this wasn’t a silly little crush anymore. This wasn’t harmless.

This was the kind of thing that could burn you alive.

Now you were in class again. Third row, slightly to the left. The seat you always took, close enough to hear him clearly, far enough not to make it obvious.

Not that it helped.

Because the moment Professor Barnes started talking, everything else fell away.

He was walking back and forth now, quoting Heart of Darkness from memory like it was tattooed on his tongue. His voice—low, thoughtful, a little rough around the edges—seeped into you like warm honey. Every sentence he spoke felt deliberate, like he wasn’t just reciting, but feeling the words. Like he wanted you to feel them, too.

You stared at him. You shouldn’t, you knew that. You should’ve been taking notes, or at least pretending to. But it was hard to look away when he looked like that. Dark hair pushed back, strands falling loose over his brow. That perpetually rolled-up sleeves look like he just needed freedom for his hands—hands that moved while he talked, expressive and precise, like every thought had weight.

You wondered what those hands would feel like on your skin.

You blinked. Jesus.

Focus.

You looked down at your notebook, at the two words you’d scrawled nearly ten minutes ago: Existential dread.

Yeah. That sounded about right.

Because this wasn’t just a harmless crush anymore. This wasn’t butterflies. This was something else—deeper. Like longing. Like obsession. Like every inch of you was tuned to his voice, his movements, the way he smiled to himself when students actually engaged with him.

He laughed once—just once—and your heart actually fluttered. Like a goddamn cliché.

You weren’t even listening to what he was saying anymore. You were watching his mouth. His hands. The way he leaned back against the edge of the desk and crossed his arms, shirt pulling tight across his shoulders.

It was insane. You were insane.

You bit your pen and tried to pretend your thighs weren’t pressed together.

He turned then, just briefly, his eyes scanning the room. And for the smallest second, you swore they landed on you. Held.

And then he smiled. It wasn’t directed at anyone. Not really.

But you felt it like a secret. Like a sin.

And you were so far gone, it almost felt holy.

You were still somewhere else—half in the lecture, half in your daydream—when the sound of his voice snapped you back to the present.

“So,” Professor Barnes said, closing his copy of the book with a quiet thud, “for those of you looking to earn a little extra credit, I’m assigning a supplementary essay. Optional. A close analysis of the text we just discussed. Two to three pages.”

A soft groan rolled through the room. A few students muttered under their breath. He smiled—just barely—and leaned his palms on the desk.

“It’s not mandatory,” he said. “But if you’re aiming for a higher final grade, this might help.”

He scanned the room again. A few hands went up. Maybe four. You didn’t think. You just lifted yours.

You felt your heart hammer as you did it, but you didn’t hesitate. If he gave you any reason to spend more time reading, writing, impressing him—you’d take it. You’d take it and run.

His eyes landed on you again. Just for a second.

He nodded, slow and deliberate.

“Good,” he said. “I’ll post the prompt later this evening.”

And then, like that, class was dismissed. A flurry of rustling paper and shuffling bags as students started rising from their seats.

But you stayed frozen for a moment, your hand already falling back into your lap, cheeks warm, notebook still open in front of you. You glanced down—your last note was a doodle of a heart you hadn’t even realized you were drawing.

Pathetic.

You began packing your things slowly, like you were in some kind of trance. You could hear his voice in your head. Good. Just that one word. Directed at the whole class, probably. But it felt aimed at you. Like it always did.

You glanced up again—he was talking to a student near the front, nodding, pointing at something in their book. He looked so natural in this space, like he belonged behind the desk, tucked into dim lecture hall lighting and surrounded by paper and ink and story.

You pretended to pack your bag longer than necessary. One strap, then the other. Notebook, water bottle, pen you never even used. You glanced up just in time to see the last few students trickle out of the room, footsteps echoing down the hall. He was still behind the desk, organizing his own materials—slow, methodical.

This was your chance.

To talk. To hear just a bit more from him.

Your heart was hammering again.

Now or never.

You walked down the steps toward him, every step feeling louder than it should. When you reached the front, he looked up—and God, why did his eyes do that?

That little flicker of recognition, the way his expression softened just a touch. It made your breath catch.

“Something you need?” he asked, calm as ever.

You nodded, gripping your notebook tight. “Yeah. Um—about the extra assignment. I just… wanted to ask if you had any specific direction in mind. Like, themes you’re hoping to see? Or…”

You trailed off, feeling ridiculous. You didn’t need clarification. You just wanted to hear him talk to you. Look at you like that again.

But he didn’t seem annoyed. If anything, his lips curved into something like amusement.

“I haven’t written the prompt yet,” he said. “But it’s not meant to trap you. I want to see how you interpret the material. That’s the whole point.”

You nodded again, trying not to look at his mouth when he spoke.

Then—he tilted his head, just slightly.

“I don’t think you need to worry,” he said. “You’re the best student I have.”

Your breath hitched.

“I’m sure you’ll write something good. You always do.”

There was a pause. You looked up at him—really looked—and he held your gaze for a second longer than he should’ve. Not inappropriate. Not quite. But it was enough to make your stomach flip.

“I believe in you,” he added, softer this time.

You didn’t know what to say.

So you just nodded. Tried to smile. It probably came out wrong.

“Thanks, Professor,” you said, voice a little too quiet.

His gaze dropped to your hands, still clutching your notebook. Then he looked away, back down at his papers, like he hadn’t just lit a match and handed it to you.

“Any time.”

You turned before you could say something stupid. Practically floated out of the room.

And for the rest of the day, all you could hear in your head was his voice, low and steady, saying:

“You’re the best student I have.”

“I believe in you.”

And God help you, it meant everything.

———

You were halfway through folding laundry—something you only did when absolutely everything else had been avoided—when the notification pinged on your phone.

New Post: Professor J. Barnes | ENGL304

Your heart jumped.

You dropped the shirt in your hands without a second thought, practically diving across the bed to grab your phone. Your thumb hovered over the screen for half a second before you tapped it open.

Supplementary Essay Prompt: Choose a moment in the text where the internal and external worlds of the character collide. Explore how the author uses language to blur the boundary between thought and reality.

Your breath caught. Your fingers were already tingling.

It wasn’t just the prompt—it was him. You could see him saying it, hear his voice in your head. That same calm confidence, that steady rhythm of words that always made your chest feel too tight.

You should’ve taken a second. Thought about it. Planned.

But no. You opened your laptop and pulled up a blank document like your life depended on it. Because in that moment, it kind of felt like it did.

You wrote like you were possessed.

The ideas poured out of you, fingers flying over the keyboard. You didn’t even stop to fix typos—you’d come back later. Right now, it was about chasing the feeling, the adrenaline high of getting it just right. You were quoting lines from memory, twisting them around your own analysis, embedding yourself into the essay like he’d told you to.

“You write with so much feeling. Don’t lose that.”

God. You wanted him to read this and feel something.

Time blurred. Your tea went cold. Your laundry sat untouched. The sky outside your dorm turned dark, but you barely noticed.

By the time you finally paused, the document was nearly three pages long, and your hands were cramping.

You stared at the screen, pulse still racing.

You hadn’t written something like that in a long time. Maybe ever. And the worst part—the most dangerous part—was that the first person you wanted to show it to was him.

Not for the grade. Not even for the praise.

Just to make him see you.

———

You barely slept.

By the time the sun started bleeding through the blinds of your dorm, the essay had been proofread four times, margins adjusted, formatting obsessively checked. Every sentence felt like it carried weight—your weight. You’d polished it until it shined.

When you printed it out that morning, the warm paper in your hands felt fragile. Like a secret. Like something that mattered more than it should.

All through class, it sat in your folder, untouched. You could barely focus, barely breathe. He was talking about poetry now—some devastating line about longing and missed moments—and you were sitting there with a whole damn confession tucked between your notebook pages.

When class ended, you didn’t leave with everyone else.

You waited until the last of the students filed out. Waited until it was quiet again, just the low hum of lights and the soft sound of him gathering his things.

You walked down the steps slowly.

He looked up as you approached, brows raising in faint surprise. His expression softened like it always did when he saw you—like you were something familiar. Something good.

“Hey,” he said, voice smooth. “Need something?”

You swallowed. Carefully slid the stapled essay from your folder and held it out to him.

He reached for it—and your fingers brushed again, skin against skin, just for a second.

He blinked down at the paper, then back at you. “Already?”

You nodded, trying not to look too proud. Or too desperate.

“I, um… finished it last night,” you said. “I know it’s not due until the end of the week, but…”

His eyes scanned the front page. Your name. The title. His lips parted just slightly.

“You wrote this last night?”

“Yeah,” you said quietly. “After you posted the prompt.”

He looked at you for a long second. Really looked at you and then he let out a soft, almost stunned breath.

“I’m impressed,” he said. His voice had dropped lower. “Most students would’ve just added it to their to-do list.”

You shrugged, trying to play it off, but your cheeks were hot. Your heart wouldn’t stop racing.

“I wanted to do it while the idea was fresh,” you mumbled.

He smiled. Not the polite kind. The real one—the one that made the corners of his eyes crinkle just a little.

“I’ll read it tonight and send the feedback on the class portal,” he said. “Looking forward to it.”

You nodded, mouth suddenly dry. You were pretty sure you were about to black out.

“Thanks, Professor.”

He gave a small nod. “Have a good rest of your day.”

You turned, heart pounding, the edges of your vision almost fuzzy with adrenaline. The moment you got out you exhaled a breath you had no idea you’ve been holding.

———

You didn’t mean to start checking the portal that night.

You told yourself you weren’t that desperate. That you weren’t waiting on the edge of your seat like a lovesick idiot for a man who probably didn’t think twice after you left the room.

But still. Just after dinner—you peeked.

Nothing.

A couple hours later, again. Nothing.

Then again before bed.

And again in bed.

By the time the clock struck midnight, you’d refreshed the page more times than you could count, screen dimmed to its lowest setting, lying flat on your stomach with your chin pressed to the mattress and your heart pounding way too fast for someone checking a grade.

It wasn’t even about the points. Not really.

You just wanted to know what he thought. You wanted to see the words he would write in the margins, the tone he would use. You wanted to feel him reading it. Like somehow, through the feedback, you’d get a glimpse of his mind—of what you made him feel, even just for a moment.

You told yourself you were being dramatic.

But still, when you checked again the next morning, stomach in knots—

It was there.

You almost dropped your phone.

You opened it with shaky hands, eyes scanning too fast, breath catching before you even saw the score. Then you saw the comments.

“This is exceptional work.”

Your heart stuttered.

“Your insight is sharp, and your interpretation of the character’s interiority is more emotionally nuanced than what I usually see at this level.”

You blinked.

“You have a rare voice. Keep writing like this. Don’t hold back.”

Your fingers tightened around the phone. And then, at the very end, written beneath your grade:

“You think deeply. It shows. I hope you know that’s rare.”

You stared at the screen for a long, long time. The words swam a little. You couldn’t decide if you wanted to cry or scream or curl up under your covers forever.

Because he hadn’t just read it.

He’d seen you. And now? You weren’t sure what to do with yourself.

———

You barely heard a word during the next class.

He was lecturing about the structure of unreliable narration—something you usually loved—but today? Your brain was mush. All you could think about was his voice in those damn margin notes. The way he’d written you have a rare voice. The way it sounded like a compliment and a confession all at once.

You didn’t look at him more than usual. At least, you told yourself that. You definitely weren’t staring at his hands while he gestured, or at the way his jaw flexed when he read a passage out loud, or how the sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled just enough to show the veins in his forearms.

Nope. Totally fine. Totally functioning.

By the time class ended, your pen had been frozen in your grip for at least fifteen minutes.

The students around you packed up their things, loud and casual. You moved slower. Not stalling. Just… composed. Careful.

You didn’t expect it when his voice stopped you mid-motion.

“Could I take a minute of your time?”

Your head snapped up. He was looking right at you. And it wasn’t the usual casual-professor look, either. It was steadier. Sharper.

Your stomach did a full flip.

“Sure,” you said, heart pounding.

He waited until the others were gone. The room emptied around you like it was routine now—just the two of you, a silence so heavy it hummed.

He didn’t sit. Just leaned against the edge of the desk, papers still in his hands, your printed essay resting neatly on top.

“I wanted to say this in person,” he began, voice low and even. “I meant every word of the feedback.”

You nodded, throat dry. “Thank you. That… meant a lot.”

His eyes didn’t leave yours. “You have a voice most writers spend years trying to find. And you use it like you know something. Like you feel it before you write it.”

You swallowed hard. “I try to.”

He tapped his fingers lightly against the paper. “This isn’t just good for a student. It’s good, period.”

A pause.

“I hope you’re taking yourself seriously.”

The way he said it—low, sincere—made your skin prickle.

You didn’t know what to do with the way he was looking at you. Focused. Intense. Like he needed you to believe him.

“I… I think I am,” you said softly.

“Good,” he said. “Because I’d hate to see talent like this go to waste.”

Another pause. The silence was a little too long.

Then he blinked, like he was shaking something off. “That’s all I wanted to say.”

But it didn’t feel like just that.

You nodded. Gripped your bag too tightly.

“Thanks,” you murmured again.

As you turned to leave, you could feel him still watching you. And this time? You didn’t try to tell yourself it was just your imagination.

You stepped out of the building and the sun hit your face, but it didn’t register. Your hands were clammy. Your breath felt shallow.

You walked on autopilot.

One foot in front of the other. Backpack slung lazily over one shoulder. Wind pulling at your sleeves.

You couldn’t hear anything but him.

“I hope you’re taking yourself seriously.”

That voice. That look. The way his eyes didn’t leave yours. Not even once.

It was just a compliment. Just praise. Just encouragement from a professor who cares about his students, right?

Right?

But your body didn’t believe that. Your chest was too tight. Your pulse kept rising in waves—like you were remembering something intimate, not academic. Like he’d touched you, even though he hadn’t. Not really. Not unless that one moment from a few days ago counted—the way your fingers brushed, the way his voice dipped when he said your name—

You blinked hard, trying to stop the flood of thoughts, but it was useless.

You’d gone overboard.

You knew that. It was a crush. That was all. A deep respect for someone brilliant and kind and… devastatingly handsome. Fine. So what if you’d fantasized a little. Everyone had a fantasy about a professor at some point, didn’t they?

But this wasn’t just a passing blush or an imaginary scenario you’d laugh off later.

This was… real.

And it felt dangerous.

You reached your dorm before you realized you’d walked the whole way without looking up. Your keys jingled like a warning as you fumbled them into the lock.

Inside, you dropped your bag. Collapsed onto your bed. Stared at the ceiling.

And when you finally closed your eyes, you didn’t see words on a page.

You saw him.

You saw the way he leaned on his desk. The way he looked at you like he meant every word he said. Like he saw something in you. Like maybe you weren’t imagining it at all.

Fuck.

———

The weekend nearly killed you.

It stretched on forever. Long, empty hours bloated with overthinking, every minute dragging its heels. You tried to distract yourself, tried to not reread his comments for the hundredth time, tried to not remember the way his voice wrapped around you like velvet, low and deliberate.

You failed, of course.

Every book you picked up made you think of him. Every sentence you tried to write dissolved into him.

You even caught yourself checking the class portal again—not for a grade, just to see if he’d posted anything. A new reading, a casual update, a breadcrumb.

Nothing.

By Sunday night, you were lying on your bed, wide awake, sick with anticipation. And when Monday morning finally came, it felt like surfacing after being underwater too long.

You barely registered the walk to class. Or the bodies shuffling into seats around you.

You just waited for him.

And when he walked in—tweed jacket, sleeves rolled, hair tousled like he’d run a hand through it too many times—you had to stop yourself from sighing out loud.

He greeted the class, the usual warm-but-firm tone, and started the lecture without ceremony. A discussion on characterization this time. You tried to listen. You really did.

But then—halfway through—his voice shifted.

“There was a line in one of the extra credit essays,” he said, “that struck me.”

Your heart stopped. Your head snapped up. You didn’t breathe.

He didn’t look at you. Not once. He just pulled a folded paper from his notes, cleared his throat, and read aloud:

“‘To want and to be wanted back—quietly, without performance or permission—is the loneliest kind of hope.’”

The words echoed in the room like a bell. Soft, sad, devastating. A few people hummed, clearly impressed.

You nearly sank through your chair.

“That,” he said, setting the paper down, “is an example of emotional precision. That kind of writing doesn’t come from talent alone. It comes from knowing what you’re talking about.”

He moved on after that. Smoothly. Professionally.

But you couldn’t hear a single word he said for the next fifteen minutes.

Because that line was yours.

He chose your words. Quoted them. In front of everyone.

And never once said your name.

But he didn’t have to.

Because when he read it aloud, he slowed down—just slightly. Let it hang in the air. Like it meant something more.

Like it meant everything.

———

After the lectures you made it back to your dorm in a daze.

Your legs moved automatically, your body going through the motions—door unlocked, shoes off, bag dropped—while your mind ran laps in circles.

His voice was still in your head.

That line. Your line. In his mouth.

And the way he read it aloud… like it meant something. Like you meant something. Like maybe—just maybe—you weren’t imagining all of it after all.

You sat down at your desk, heart still galloping. Opened your laptop. The blank document blinked back at you, waiting patiently.

You tried to focus. Tried to start something—anything. A short story. A paragraph. A line.

But nothing came out clean. Everything you wrote bled with him.

The way he looked at you when he said “I hope you know that’s rare.” The quiet authority in his voice. The pause before he moved on.

You blinked down at your screen and realized you’d written his name.

James.

You hit backspace like it had burned you. You buried your face in your hands and let out a groan of defeat.

That was when your roommate’s voice cut through the haze.

“Okay,” she said slowly, from the other side of the room. “I’ve let you spiral in peace for like… three days. But I’m asking now.”

You looked up.

She was sprawled on her bed with a book in hand, but she wasn’t reading anymore. She was watching you like a detective piecing something together.

“You good?” she asked. “Because you’ve been—sorry—weird as hell lately. And I’m trying to be chill but you’re kinda giving haunted Victorian woman who’s in love with a ghost and journaling about it nightly.”

You blinked.

She raised an eyebrow. “Did something happen? Like in class? Or is it a boy?”

Your breath hitched.

She squinted. “Oh my god.”

“I didn’t say anything,” you muttered.

“You didn’t have to.”

You groaned and fell back dramatically onto your mattress. “Please don’t look at me,” you said into your pillow. “I’m not okay.”

She snorted. “Clearly. Do you want to talk about it, or should I just keep making passive observations until you break?”

“…Just keep talking. I’m almost there.”

“Got it,” she said. “So. Whoever he is… you look like he read your diary out loud and then kissed your brain.”

You let out a muffled scream into the pillow.

She threw a pillow at your back. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

You stayed facedown on the bed for a full minute, motionless, trying to pretend you could melt into the mattress and disappear entirely.

Your roommate waited. Patient. Quiet, but unrelenting.

Eventually, you flipped over with a sigh, eyes to the ceiling. “Okay,” you muttered. “I’ll talk. Kind of.”

She sat up like she’d just won a prize. “Knew it.”

You stared at the ceiling a second longer. “It’s not… anything. Nothing happened. Nothing could happen.”

That got you a raised brow. “That’s how all great breakdowns start.”

You let out a small laugh. Hollow. “It’s just—I think I like someone. More than I should. And it’s… complicated.”

“Okay,” she said gently. “Complicated how?”

You paused.

How do you explain to your roommate from the same college that you have a crush on a Professor?

How do you explain that the person you’re obsessed with stands three feet away from you every week and looks at you like you’re made of lightning? That he said your words out loud like they were precious? That you see him in every sentence you try to write?

You blinked up at the ceiling, lips parted.

“…He’s older,” you said finally. “Smart. Confident. The kind of person who makes you want to be better without even trying.”

“Hot,” your roommate said knowingly.

You didn’t respond. You didn’t have to.

“I take it this isn’t someone you can just—ask out,” she added.

You gave a miserable laugh. “Not even close.”

“Right,” she said, sitting back. “So. A forbidden crush.”

“It’s more than that,” you said, before you could stop yourself. “It’s not just that he’s… beautiful. Or that I’m, like, physically gone for him.”

You paused, chest tight.

“I think he sees me,” you whispered.

That silenced her. You could feel it—her shifting slightly, blinking slow, suddenly understanding the depth of this.

“Shit,” she said softly.

You smiled. Sad. Tired. “Yeah.”

———

It was later that night when you saw it.

You were curled up at your desk again, doing anything but concentrating. Notes open, highlighter in hand, but your brain was still stuck on him. On your roommate’s words echoing back at you. A forbidden crush.

You hadn’t checked your email in hours. You clicked into it on instinct—more to feel productive than anything else—and there it was.

Subject: Your Essay

From: Prof. J. Barnes

To: You

Your pulse stuttered.

You stared at it for a long moment before you even opened it. Just the sight of his name—his full name—was enough to make your lungs tighten.

You clicked.

Hi, I just finished rereading your extra credit piece. I keep coming back to the line about “the loneliest kind of hope.” I’m curious—do you normally write personal pieces like that? Or was this a one-off? Either way, you have a voice worth nurturing. Don’t stop. —J. Barnes

You reread it five times.

I keep coming back to that line.

You had to press your thighs together beneath the desk. You were going to lose your mind.

You leaned back in your chair, staring up at the ceiling like it might give you answers, trying to breathe through the way that one question knocked the air from your chest.

Do you normally write personal pieces like that?

He was asking. Inviting. Gently. Carefully. Like he wanted more from you—your words, your mind, your insides.

You stared at the blinking cursor in the reply box for a full minute before typing:

Sometimes. That one came out all at once. I didn’t mean for it to be personal. But it was.

You stared at it, then added:

Thank you. That means more than I can say.

You didn’t sign it. You didn’t need to.

You hit send with a trembling hand and then you just sat there, waiting. Heart pounding.

Your inbox chimed.

You opened it so fast it was almost embarrassing.

Got it. Looking forward to seeing you in lecture tomorrow. —J.B.

That was it.

No comment on how personal it was. No follow-up question. Just that.

And yet somehow it made your skin feel too tight, like he was right behind you, saying it low into your neck.

The heat of it stayed with you all night.

You didn’t sleep. You couldn’t.

You just kept rereading those twelve words like they meant something more—like maybe, tomorrow, he’d look at you the way he wrote to you.

And if he did—

God help you.

———

The lecture hall was already half full when you slipped into your usual seat, nerves jangling in your chest like wind chimes in a storm. You told yourself to be normal. Be chill. Pretend this was just another class.

It wasn’t.

You felt it the moment he walked in. He didn’t look for you. Not at first. He dropped his leather bag by the desk, rolled up his sleeves, and started sorting through his notes. Casual. Unbothered. Like he hadn’t sent that email. Like he hadn’t singled you out with a line that still echoed in your ribcage.

And then he looked up.

His eyes found you instantly. It was only a second. Maybe two.

But it hit you.

The look. Low. Deliberate. Like he was checking if you’d seen the email. Like he wanted to see how it landed. Like he knew exactly what he was doing.

You didn’t breathe until he looked away.

And then he spoke—cool, composed, voice smooth like water over stones.

You didn’t retain a word. You tried to. Really.

But every time he paced near your row, every time his hand brushed through his hair, every time he turned toward the whiteboard with that low, thoughtful hum—your mind lit up like a match.

By the time class ended, your pulse was a slow, burning ache in your throat You started packing up, hands shaking slightly, when his voice cut through the air.

“Could I speak with you for a moment?”

You.

Not someone.

Not a few of you.

Just you.

You froze. Looked up. He was watching you with that unreadable expression, the one that looked polite to anyone else—but to you? It felt like gravity.

You nodded slowly.

Your classmates filtered out one by one. Chatter, laughter, sneakers on tile. Then the door clicked shut behind the last of them.

He waited until the room was empty.

“You know… As I said the last time… You’ve got a gift,” he said quietly, leaning a little against the desk. “The kind that doesn’t come around often.”

Your breath caught.

“I mean it,” he added. “You’ve got instincts I can’t teach.”

You swallowed hard. “Thank you.”

“I don’t usually do this,” he said, folding his arms across his chest. “But if you ever want to take on a few extra assignments—off the record, nothing for credit—I’d be happy to give you material. Just something to help you grow. Expand your style.”

You blinked. “I—really?” you said. “You’d do that?”

“Of course,” he said, like it was obvious. “I believe in you.”

That did it. That ruined you.

You nodded, barely holding it together. “Okay. Yeah. I’d… like that.”

His mouth twitched—just the ghost of a smile.

“I have office hours on Thursdays. Drop by anytime.”

He said it simply. Lightly, but his eyes held yours just a little too long.

You swallowed, pulse thudding in your neck.

“…Thank you,” you said softly. “I’ll be there.”

———

Thursday

You finished your last lectures early, but your heart had been racing since breakfast.

All day, you’d told yourself it was just office hours. Just a writing meeting. Just a professor offering support.

But your outfit said otherwise.

The black skirt had felt like an indulgence when you pulled it on. Not too short—just enough to ride up when you sat. The knee-high socks. Soft. Your favorite pair. And the sweater you chose had a neckline that technically counted as academic, but dipped just low enough to make you wonder if he’d notice.

Your coat went over it all, of course. You told yourself it was just because of the weather.

You kept checking the time. Fixing your hair. Touching your lips.

At one point, you even considered not going.

But then you thought of his voice.

“I believe in you.”

And that was that.

You walked across campus with your coat cinched tight, thighs already tingling from nerves. His building was quiet this time of day—long halls, soft echoes, your boots the only sound on the floor.

You reached his door and paused.

Office hours: Thursdays 3:30–5:00

Prof. J. Barnes

You checked your phone.

3:27.

Close enough.

You knocked.

His voice came from the other side. “Come in.”

You opened the door slowly.

He was at his desk, reading—his reading glasses on, sleeves rolled, jaw resting on his knuckles like some kind of literary daydream.

And when he looked up—

God.

That look.

A flicker of surprise. And then something else. Something slower. Deeper.

“Hi,” you said softly, stepping in and closing the door behind you.

“Hey,” he murmured, setting his papers down and taking the glasses off. “Didn’t think I’d see you this early.”

You shrugged, trying to play it cool. “Had a break between classes. Figured I’d stop by.”

He nodded once. “Good.”

Then his eyes dropped. Just for a second.

Skirt. The knee-high socks. Sweater.

And then back to your face, like nothing had happened.

“Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the chair beside his desk. “Let’s talk writing.”

You sat down, trying to look casual—crossed one leg over the other, smoothed your skirt out just enough to look natural, not like you were stalling for time. Your hands were cold. You pressed your thighs together to ground yourself.

He stood up, slow and unhurried, and reached into the stack of papers on his desk.

“I printed a few prompts for you,” he said, flipping through them. “Just exercises. Things to stretch your style a bit. Narrative voice, intimacy, sensory detail…”

You hummed some kind of agreement, but your heart was pounding too loud to think.

He found the one he wanted.

Then he moved.

He walked around the desk—behind you.

And then he leaned in.

He bent slightly, one hand bracing the desk beside your chair, the other holding the printout in front of you—and fuck, he was close.

You felt it before you even looked.

The heat of his body just barely grazing your back. His breath ghosting across your cheek. The way his sweater brushed your shoulder like he didn’t notice—or maybe he did.

“This one’s interesting,” he said, voice low by your ear. “Write a short piece in second person. Doesn’t have to be plot-heavy. Just describe a moment. Make the reader feel it.”

You could barely hear him.

Because all you could feel was him.

The warmth of his voice. The quiet scratch of his stubble. The scent of coffee and old paper and something darker, something sharp and male that made your stomach twist in heat.

He didn’t move away.

You stared at the paper, not taking in a single word.

He was still talking, still explaining—but your brain had gone soft. Liquid.

Your eyes tracked the paragraph at the top of the page, but all you could think about was how easy it would be to lean back just slightly. To tilt your head, to feel him against you—

“Think you can work with that?” he murmured.

Your lips parted. Your breath stuttered.

“Y-Yeah,” you said. “I… yeah.”

His hand lingered for one more second. And then he stepped back. Just like that. Like he hadn’t just undone you with his proximity alone.

“Take your time with it,” he said, settling back at his desk. “No deadline.”

You nodded, gripping the paper like it might float away otherwise.

But he was still watching you. And that look in his eyes said he knew. He knew exactly what he was doing.

You made it out of his office.

Barely.

You didn’t even remember saying goodbye. Just some stammered “thank you” and a smile you couldn’t control—tight, awkward, desperate to seem unbothered.

The hallway was quiet. Too quiet.

You walked fast. Your boots hit the tile harder than you meant them to. You didn’t breathe until you were out of the building and even then—it was shallow.

Your heart was hammering. Your face was flushed. And between your thighs, a slow, aching pulse had taken up residence, insistent and low, like your body was mocking you for pretending this was just academic.

You leaned against the nearest wall and closed your eyes.

His voice was still in your ear.

“Make the reader feel it.”

You could still feel him.

The brush of his sweater. The warmth of his chest behind you. His breath, low and smooth, brushing the shell of your ear like he’d said something filthy.

You pressed your thighs together.

It didn’t help.

You needed to do something. Walk. Call a friend. Throw yourself into traffic.

Instead, you pulled out the prompt he’d given you.

Second person.

A moment.

Make the reader feel it.

And all you could think was:

You can feel him behind you. You don’t move. You’re afraid if you move, you’ll do something you can’t undo.

You stared at the paper, your pulse thudding behind your eyes.

You were going to write this.

———

You made it back to your dorm.

Dropped your bag by the door, kicked your shoes off, ignored your roommate’s “hey, you okay?” from the other side of the room. You muttered something vague, shut your door, sat at your desk like it was the only thing keeping you tethered to the Earth.

The prompt was still in your hand. You smoothed it out on the desk. Read it again.

Second person. A moment. Doesn’t have to be plot-heavy. Just describe. Make the reader feel it.

You opened your laptop. Opened a fresh document.

You weren’t going to make it about him.

You weren’t.

You were going to be neutral. Abstract. Maybe something about being in a crowd. Something literary. Polished.

Your fingers hovered over the keys.

Nothing.

You tried again.

Still nothing.

And then—like heat slipping down your spine—his voice came back. Low. Calm. Right next to your ear.

“Think you can work with that?”

Your hands moved before your brain caught up.

You feel his presence before he speaks. You don’t see him, not yet. But the air changes. The space behind you goes warm. Heavy. You pretend to read what’s in front of you, but you’ve forgotten the words. You’ve forgotten everything. Then his voice comes—low, deliberate, meant only for you. And suddenly you’re aware of every part of yourself. Your mouth. Your throat. Your thighs. The way your breath stutters and your hands twitch and you hope to god he doesn’t notice, even though some small part of you wants him to.

You froze. Your mouth was dry.

You hadn’t meant to write that.

You tried to steer it back—tried to fix it, smooth it out, make it sound less hungry—but it was no use.

The words kept coming.

And it was him. All of it. The desk, the breath, the sweater, the feeling of being looked at like he saw something in you.

You weren’t writing an exercise anymore.

You were writing a confession.

———

The next class passed in a blur.

You barely heard a word.

You tried, really—but his voice was like a siren’s call, and every time he turned to write on the board, every time he paused to take off his glasses, every time he looked at the class and let his eyes linger just long enough…

You lost your mind.

You held the printed pages in your folder like they were made of glass—carefully tucked between notes and old handouts, like hiding them there could somehow protect you from how exposed they made you feel.

When the lecture ended, students packed up. Loud chatter, chairs scraping, the usual rhythm.

You lingered. You always lingered now.

He was tidying his desk. Straightening papers. Tucking chalk into his pocket like it was something soft, something thoughtful.

You walked up slowly, your heart in your throat.

“Hey,” you said, almost too quiet.

His eyes lifted to yours.

And there it was again. That flicker.

Like he saw something he wasn’t supposed to—but didn’t mind.

“Hey,” he said. “What’s up?”

You slid the pages from your folder. Held them out to him.

“Just… the second person piece. The prompt you gave me.”

He reached for it—fingers brushing yours in that now-familiar way that made your pulse spike.

“You didn’t have to bring it today,” he said, glancing at the clock. “Still plenty of time.”

You shrugged, trying to seem light.

“I wanted to.”

He smiled—small, quiet. Like he liked that answer.

“I’ll read it tonight,” he said. “Looking forward to it.”

You nodded.

But he didn’t look away. His fingers lingered on the edge of the paper. And then, like he couldn’t help himself:

“Second person’s tricky. It only works if it feels real.”

Your mouth went dry.

“It’s… pretty real,” you said. “I think.”

His eyes lingered on yours for a beat too long. Then he tucked the pages into his folder. Neatly. Carefully. Like they were something worth saving.

“I’ll let you know,” he said, voice lower now. “What I think.”

You nodded again, then turned and walked out of the room—fast.

You didn’t breathe until you were halfway down the hall. You didn’t even realize you were smiling.

———

You didn’t sleep. God, you tried. You tried so fucking much but literally couldn’t.

Your brain was too loud—buzzing under your skin, humming with thoughts you couldn’t shake.

He said he’d read it. He said he was looking forward to it. And still…

Nothing.

You kept your phone next to your pillow. Woke up every hour to check it. Opened your laptop in the dark at 3am just in case he’d replied by email instead. You refreshed the page so many times the school’s server locked you out temporarily.

Nothing.

By morning, your chest hurt.

Last time, he’d responded so fast.

A message just before sunrise, margins full of praise. Little notes like: “this is exceptional work” and “your insight is sharp,” and “you have a rare voice.”

But now—silence.

You tried to be rational.

Maybe he was busy. Maybe he didn’t get a chance. Maybe he wanted to take his time.

But that part of your brain—the quiet, clawing part that knew exactly what you’d written between the lines—whispered something else.

You went too far.

He knows it was about him.

He read it and felt uncomfortable.

Disappointed.

Maybe he won’t speak to you again.

Maybe you ruined it.

You stared at your inbox.

The cursor blinked back at you.

Still nothing.

You sat there, wrapped in your blanket, the morning light slowly spilling through the blinds—and it felt like the whole world was holding its breath.

Just waiting.

———

You thought about skipping.

Just once. Just this class. Just until the ache in your chest faded and the memory of what you’d written stopped clawing at the inside of your skull.

But your body moved on its own.

Because it was his class.

And no matter how sick or nervous you felt, you couldn’t stay away.

You walked in a few minutes early. Sat near the back. Not in your usual spot—not where he’d see you first.

He didn’t look at you when he entered.

Not once.

He started the lecture like nothing was different. Same tone. Same rhythm. A few light jokes, a few questions thrown out to the class. He even brought up second person again, said something about how intimacy could be built through subtlety.

And you could’ve sworn, for one blistering second, that his eyes flicked toward you.

But then they moved on. He never called on you. Never addressed you directly.

And by the time class ended, your chest felt hollow. You stayed frozen in your seat as students packed up, dragging bags and papers and noise around you, like you weren’t there at all.

Until you heard him speak.

“Could you stay a moment?”

You looked up.

His eyes were already on you.

Everything in your body screamed to run but your feet carried you forward, slowly, until you were at his desk again—like always.

He waited until the last student left. Then he sat on the edge of his desk. Crossed his arms. Looked at you.

Not angry. Not cold. Just… Careful.

“I read your piece.”

Your stomach flipped so hard it hurt. You nodded, eyes on the floor. “Okay.”

He was quiet for a moment.

“You know I asked for a moment. Not a confession.”

You flinched.

It wasn’t cruel, not even sharp. Just honest.

You didn’t answer. You couldn’t.

He let the silence hang, heavy between you.

And then, his tone was softer. “It was good,” he said. “Really good.”

You looked up. His eyes were darker now. Not unreadable—but serious.

“That kind of writing takes… nerve,” he said. “A lot of people hide behind the exercise. You didn’t.”

“I wasn’t trying to—” you started, voice too thin, too small.

“I know,” he said. “But I also know what it was.”

Your mouth was dry.

He stood up.

Walked around the desk, slowly, until he was standing beside you—close, but not too close.

“You’re my student,” he said, low. “This stays between us. Do you understand?”

You nodded, pulse loud in your ears. “Yes.”

His gaze held yours for a moment longer.

Then—like a knife slipped under your ribs, deliberate and impossibly gentle:

“You should keep writing like that.”

He turned back to his desk. Pulled out a folder. Began sorting papers.

And you stood there, stunned, body humming like a live wire.

You didn’t know what any of it meant.

But you knew one thing for sure:

He didn’t want you to stop.

———

You were shaking the whole way home.

You didn’t even realize it until you dropped your bag on the floor of your dorm and your fingers missed the zipper. You had to sit down. Catch your breath.

The echo of his voice kept replaying in your head.

“I know what it was.”

“You should keep writing like that.”

Like what?

Honest?

Obsessed?

So turned on you couldn’t breathe?

You opened your laptop without thinking. Fingers moving before your brain could catch up. A new doc. A blank page.

And then—nothing.

You stared at it, your thighs pressing together, your pulse still high. You remembered the way he looked at you. The heat behind his eyes. The calm restraint in his voice.

You typed:

You shouldn’t want this.

Backspaced.

Typed again.

You feel his eyes before you see them. The way they linger. The way they burn.

Pause.

You swallowed hard and kept going.

He never touches you. Not really. But the space between you is thick enough to drown in. And you want to fall forward. You want to drown. You imagine what it would be like if he gave in. If he broke. You imagine it—how easily he could ruin you. How his hands would feel pressed between your thighs instead of paper and pages. How his mouth would sound gasping against your skin instead of quoting dead poets. If that voice of his sank low—not for the sake of analysis, but to whisper your name like a sin. And when you close your eyes at night, you let yourself beg for it. Let yourself ache. Because the thought of his discipline breaking is the sweetest torment you’ve ever known.

You stopped.

Chest rising too fast. Your thighs clenched so tight it almost hurt. Heat spreading beneath your skin like ink in water—bleeding, blooming, unavoidable.

You deleted the last paragraph. Tried again.

But everything that came out was worse. Dirtier. More desperate. Raw in a way that scared you.

And still— You couldn’t stop.

You rewrote it.

Because now every word felt like something he might read.

And maybe—maybe—he’d understand.

———

The classroom felt different now.

It wasn’t that anything had changed—he still walked in with the same ease, still set his notes on the desk like the weight of them mattered, still spoke with that velvet voice that made every line of literature sound like scripture.

But he kept looking at you. Not obvious. Never for too long. But enough.

Enough to make your chest tighten. Enough to make your fingers itch to write more.

You tried to focus. Really, you did. But it was impossible with the way his eyes flicked to you mid-sentence. The way he slowed just a little when reading a line about forbidden want, about restraint, about something unsaid.

You swore you stopped breathing when he said:

“Sometimes what’s not written on the page is more powerful than what is.”

And he looked straight at you.

Your thighs pressed together automatically.

When the class ended, you were already moving. You didn’t even think about it.

He didn’t ask you to stay this time—but you did. You walked straight up to him, your breath caught somewhere between your ribs and your throat.

He looked up when you approached, closing his folder slowly.

You didn’t say anything right away. Just pulled the paper from your bag—folded once, printed, still warm from your hand—and offered it to him.

“I wrote something,” you said quietly. “Again.”

His eyes dropped to the page. Then back to you. His jaw ticked. Slowly, he reached for it—his fingers brushing yours, warm and deliberate—and the way your pulse jumped didn’t go unnoticed.

His voice stayed low. “You wrote this last night?”

You nodded. “Yeah.”

A beat.

“It wouldn’t let me sleep.” You added, softly.

Something flickered behind his eyes at that. A shadow of something deeper. Something not professional.

He took the page. Folded it once more. Slipped it into the folder with the rest of his notes.

Then he looked at you. Steady. Measured.

“I’ll read it,” he said.

You nodded, trying to swallow the way your pulse had picked up again.

“Thank you,” you murmured.

His gaze lingered for a half second longer. Then he gave a small, polite nod.

“Have a good afternoon.”

And just like that—it was back to normal.

———

Your evening was supposed to be normal.

Laundry. Ramen. Pretending to study with music too loud in your headphones. Maybe reading through your notes and trying not to think about him. Trying to pretend last night’s words weren’t still burning beneath your skin.

You were halfway through a playlist when your phone buzzed.

You didn’t expect to see his name.

Not in your inbox.

But there it was.

Subject: RE: Your Essay

From: Prof. J. Barnes

To: You

I’ve read your work. Come to my office hours tomorrow. We’ll discuss it.

That was it.

No greeting. No feedback.

Just an invitation.

You stared at it for a full minute.

Your stomach flipped. Your mouth went dry.

Your legs curled tighter beneath your blanket, and still—it felt like there was no safe position. No angle where the heat didn’t spread between your thighs like fire licking the edge of paper.

Your fingers hovered over your keyboard, itching to respond. To ask what did you think or what do you want from me or what the fuck are you doing to me.

But you didn’t.

You just read it again.

And again.

And all night long, it echoed in your head.

“We’ll discuss it.”

———

You were early.

Standing outside his office door with your pulse in your throat and your thighs already pressed together beneath your skirt. It was black. Tight. You’d worn it on purpose—just like the sheer black tights, just like the blouse with one button undone too many. Casual, but careful. Calculated. You didn’t need to tease him.

But you wanted to.

You knocked at 3:30 sharp.

The door opened.

He was alone. As always. He didn’t smile.

“Come in.”

You stepped inside. The room smelled like leather and old books and something faintly sharp—his cologne, probably. It clung to the air like static.

He closed the door behind you.

Locked it. You pretended not to notice.

He moved behind his desk, reached for the folder already laid open—your paper sitting neatly at the top, marked in pencil. His sleeves were rolled up. His fingers steady. His eyes unreadable.

“Have a seat.”

You did.

But your knees wouldn’t stop bouncing, and you didn’t miss the way his eyes dragged down your legs and back up.

He picked up your page. Cleared his throat.

And then—he read aloud.

“He never touches you. Not really. But the space between you is thick enough to drown in. And you want to fall forward. You want to drown.”

Your breath stuttered.

His voice was low. Deliberate.

And when he looked at you again, it was different.

Not careful. Not kind.

Hungry.

“Is that what you want?” he asked softly. “To drown?”

Your mouth opened—but nothing came out.

He stepped around the desk.

You watched him move like you were in a dream. His shoes slow against the floor, the air tightening with every step.

“I told myself I wouldn’t cross a line,” he said. “But you keep writing it. Begging for it.”

He stopped in front of you. Held out a hand.

“Come here.”

You stood slowly. Heart pounding.

He didn’t touch you right away.

Just looked.

Then, finally—finally—his hand came to your thigh.

And it was so soft at first. Just a graze through the sheer fabric. His fingers dragged up slowly, until his palm cupped the side of your leg and his thumb pressed in, feeling the tremble there.

“So… Is this what you want?” he murmured.

You nodded but he shook his head.

“No. Use your words.”

Your voice came out barely more than a whisper. “Yes. I want it.”

He exhaled—low, rough, like he’d been holding it in for too long.

“Good girl.”

His palm pressed more firmly into your thigh now. He was still watching your face as he dragged his hand up—under your skirt, over your tights, to the seam at the top where your heat radiated like fire.

He let his thumb brush over your center—barely—but it was enough to make you jolt.

“Fuck,” he muttered. “You’re already this wet?” He chuckled, voice dark.

Your thighs clenched, and he smiled—cruel and soft.

“All that pretty writing,” he whispered, lips brushing your ear. “But you still couldn’t describe this right, could you? How it really feels.”

You whimpered, and his eyes darkened.

He leaned in—lips grazing your jaw as he hooked a finger into the band of your tights. Slowly, deliberately, he pulled them down just enough, letting the waistband settle below your ass before his hand slipped back up and under.

Hot skin. Calloused fingers. Finally touching where you needed him most.

He hissed through his teeth the moment he felt you. “Jesus, sweetheart.”

Two fingers slid between your folds, and your whole body shuddered.

He didn’t push in yet. Not right away.

He toyed with you first—rubbing slow circles, slick and lazy, watching your mouth fall open and your grip on the desk tighten.

“C’mon,” he said softly. “Let me see it.”

And you did.

You tipped your hips forward instinctively, searching for more friction. More pressure. More of him.

He pressed the pads of his fingers right against your clit and moved in slow, torturous circles.

Your breath caught.

“That’s it,” he breathed. “Let me hear you.”

A moan escaped—soft and broken.

His fingers teased lower now, circling your entrance.

“Still want to drown?” he asked, voice ragged.

You nodded, eyes heavy.

“Say it.”

“I want to drown,” you whispered. “Please—Professor—”

That name did something to him. His composure frayed. Just slightly.

Then he pushed in—one finger, slow and firm, filling you so good it made your eyes flutter shut.

“Fuck. So tight for me.”

You whined—hips shifting, trying to take more.

He gave it to you. A second finger joined the first, and he curled them just right, stroking that spot deep inside that made your thighs shake.

You clutched the edge of the desk like it was the only thing holding you up.

And then—his thumb returned to your clit.

Slow circles. Firm strokes. Just enough.

Your whole body arched into his hand.

“You’re gonna come for me like this,” he murmured. “Messy and shaking and quiet, just like I knew you would.”

You were panting now, close—so close your legs were trembling, your head falling forward onto his shoulder as heat coiled tight in your belly.

And he knew.

He caught your chin with his free hand, made you look at him.

“Don’t forget it,” he murmured. “Next time you write… I want you to describe this.”

His lips brushed your ear.

“Come on. Let go.”

You fell apart. Silently. Violently.

Your body clenched around his fingers and your breath caught in your throat as your orgasm crashed over you—deep and dizzying, the kind that left you floating.

He kept his fingers moving, working you through it, murmuring praises against your skin.

“That’s it, sweetheart. Knew you’d be this perfect.”

When you finally came down, chest heaving, he slid his fingers out gently.

You could feel how wet your thighs were, how your tights clung where they shouldn’t.

And then—fuck—he brought his fingers to his mouth. Sucked one clean. Watched you while he did it.

“I’ll be thinking about this,” he murmured. “Next time you write me something.”

The air was thick—soaked in sex and tension and the sound of your breath still stuttering in your chest.

He watched you recover, watched your knees threaten to buckle beneath you.

And he didn’t let you go. Not yet.

He stepped even closer, crowding you between his body and the desk. His hands settled on your hips. His voice, low and rough, curled over your spine like smoke.

“Sit up there for me.”

You blinked—still dazed.

He lifted you before you could obey. Hands strong beneath your thighs, lifting you effortlessly onto the edge of his desk. The wood was cool under your skin, but he was warm, grounding, overwhelming.

He parted your knees. Looked down.

Your tights were still half-on, messy and clinging to the tops of your thighs. Your skirt was bunched up. And your cunt? Glowing. Glazed. Absolutely dripping.

He groaned when he saw you.

“God, look at you.”

You squirmed under his gaze. Tried to close your legs.

But he stopped you with a look. And then—he sank to his knees.

Your breath died.

Professor Barnes—on the floor—between your legs?

That should have been illegal. (…it probably was.)

But you couldn’t care. Not when he gripped your thighs and leaned in with that heat in his eyes. Not when he pushed your legs wider and stared like you were a feast he’d been denied too long.

“Tell me to stop,” he rasped. “If you want me to.”

You shook your head, frantic. “Please don’t stop.”

He didn’t.

His tongue touched you—and everything ended.

The first stroke was slow. Deep. A long, deliberate lick from your entrance to your clit that made your whole body jolt.

“Oh—fuck—”

He groaned into you.

You could feel it. The vibration of his mouth, the grip of his hands keeping you spread for him as he dove back in.

He ate you like a man possessed.

No teasing now. No pretending to be composed.

Just messy, desperate hunger—his mouth hot and wet, his tongue flicking your clit before he sucked it between his lips, just enough pressure to send you spinning.

Your hands flew to his hair.

You shouldn’t have done it but you did. You tangled your fingers in the dark strands and pulled, and he moaned.

Moaned into you.

Ground his face harder against your cunt like he wanted to bury himself inside it.

“Oh my god—“

You choked on a moan.

“Professor—please—fuck—”

He smiled into your pussy.

That was when he started to devour you.

Tongue lapping. Lips sealing. Chin soaked. One hand released your thigh and slipped back between your legs, fingers thrusting in deep while his mouth never stopped, never relented, never fucking slowed.

You were going to lose your mind.

Your vision blurred. Your hips stuttered and your heels dug into the edge of the desk, your cries broken and high and helpless as he coaxed your orgasm out of you with no mercy.

You came like a wave crashing.

Loud. Shaking. Gasping his title like a prayer you couldn’t stop whispering.

“Professor—Professor—fuck, please—”

He held you down, kept his mouth on you while you rode it out, licked you through it like he lived for the taste of you falling apart.

And then—only then—he pulled back.

You were soaked. Ruined. Boneless.

He kissed your thigh and rose slowly from his knees, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His lips were wet. His cheeks flushed. His eyes dark.

When he leaned in again, he pressed a soft kiss to your neck—gentle, almost affectionate.

And then he whispered, low and hoarse:

“You taste even better than you write.”

His hands were steady as they slid under your thighs, lifting you down from the desk like you weighed nothing at all. Your knees buckled slightly, and he caught you—pulled you close, flush to his chest.

And he held you.

Not like he’d just fucked the soul out of you with his mouth.

Like he was afraid to let go.

His palm cradled the back of your head, and you breathed him in—cologne, paper, heat—and then you felt his lips brush the crown of your head, a kiss so soft it nearly undid you again.

“My good girl,” he murmured, voice rough with praise and something too raw to name.

Your breath caught.

“You did so well for me,” he continued, whispering it just for you. “So sweet, so responsive. You listen so well. Always such a quick learner.”

His hand traced slowly down your back, fingers splayed wide like he wanted to memorize the shape of you.

“You’re my favorite student,” he said—low, like a confession. “My brightest. My best.”

You felt heat bloom behind your eyes.

It shouldn’t have mattered. It was a dangerous, stupid thing to say. But right then? You needed it. You drank it in like oxygen.

He pulled back enough to tilt your chin up, eyes locking with yours—blue and burning.

“God, you are so sweet,” he breathed. “My sweet girl.”

Your lips parted—but nothing came. No words, no sound. Just the soft thudding of your heart against his chest and the brush of his thumb stroking over your cheek like he worshipped you.

Then—

A kiss. Slow. Deep. A little shaky.

Not hunger—hunger came first.

This was something else.

Possession. Affection. Reverence.

He kissed you like he meant it. Like he knew it was a line too far—but he’d already crossed it, and he was never going back.

When he finally pulled away, your lips were kiss-swollen and your breath unsteady.

He smiled. Just faintly.

“I meant what I said,” he whispered. “You want to write something beautiful—come to me. I’ll make sure you find the words.”

Your legs felt weak. Your pulse was a flutter in your throat, your heart pounding like it was trying to break free—and still, his hands were gentle. Grounding. Like he was afraid you might vanish if he let go.

You lifted your eyes to his.

“Professor…” You whispered.

His title on your lips made him still.

He watched you. Quiet. Waiting.

And that was when it rose. That slow, hot swirl of everything you’d been trying to ignore—craving, confusion, want. Not just for this—not just for his hands, his mouth.

You wanted him.

All of him.

So you asked it, soft and broken. “…What is this?”

His brows pulled together. Not harsh. Just quiet confusion, maybe even guilt. His fingers shifted on your waist, and you almost thought he’d pull away.

You didn’t let him.

“I need to know,” you said, a little stronger. “Because I can’t pretend this is just about… writing. Or just about today.”

You breathed in.

“I want it,” you confessed, voice low and fierce. “I want you. I don’t even know what that means yet, or what we’re doing, or if I’m crazy—but I want all of it. And if this is just a mistake to you, then—”

“No.” His voice cut in—firm and certain. “Don’t say that.”

You blinked up at him.

His jaw was tight. His eyes a storm. One of his hands rose to cup your cheek again, thumb brushing under your eye like he was trying to soothe something raw.

“This isn’t a mistake,” he said, quiet but intense. “It’s the farthest thing from it.”

“But it’s—wrong,” you whispered. “Isn’t it?”

“Too late for that,” he murmured.

And then, softer:

“I think about you all the time.”

The admission landed heavy in the space between you.

He stepped even closer, like he couldn’t help it.

“When you speak in class, when you smile… when you hand in work that’s so beautiful it fucking hurts to read—I think about what it would be like to touch you. To hold you. And now that I have…”

He swallowed hard.

“Now I don’t know how I’m supposed to stop.”

Your breath hitched. He leaned in again—his lips just a breath from yours and asked:

“Do you still want it?”

Your answer was instant.

“Yes.”

You said yes, and it was like something inside him broke loose.

Not with urgency. Not with hunger.

But with relief.

His hand cradled the side of your face, thumb sweeping along your cheek as he leaned in—eyes locked on yours like you were something holy.

And then, he kissed you. Slow.

Like a promise.

His mouth moved with reverence, not desperation—like he was savoring every second of it. Like kissing you was something he’d imagined too many times, and now that it was real, he was terrified to ruin it.

His other hand pressed to the small of your back, drawing you close again. Closer than before. His body warm and steady against yours.

He broke the kiss only barely—his lips still brushing yours, breath hot, voice low.

“Good girl…”

The words settled into your skin like silk.

You shivered, but it wasn’t from cold.

It was from being seen.

Wanted. Praised. His.

You closed your eyes, trying to breathe through the feeling.

Warm in his arms. His voice still echoing in your ears. And your heart beating a little too fast for something that had only just begun.

Part Two

tags: @iamthatonefangirl @hiraethmae (dm or comment If you wanna be added to my tag list) 💋

[freaktoru]

ONLY GOOD GIRLS GET GOOD GRADES!

✰ pairing: professor!sylus x fem!reader ✰ summary: desperate to raise your failing grade, you meet professor sylus in his office where he gives you feedback that looks a little different from what you expected. wc; 4.9k (im so sorry) ✰ warnings: use of pet names, dirty talk, fingering, oral m!receiving, unprotected sex, degradation, praise, slight dom/sub dynamics, power play, pussy slapping (once), minor cum play, some thigh riding, size kink bcz sylus is huge, tummy bulge, choking, kinda pet play, sylus might be abit ooc (sorry i tired), 18+ MDNI ✰ note: first time writing for sylus, i hope i did him justice. guys those slutty fucking glasses get me everytime. likes and reblogs always appreciated <3

You exhale a shaky breath, looking down at your paper through blurry eyes. Thick, wet tears prick at the corners, threatening to fall onto the big, mocking red ink that displays your grade. A fucking fail. 

Having been a straight A student throughout university—and really, for as long as you could remember—you couldn’t wrap your head around how things had spiraled to this point. Any grade below an A had always been unthinkable for you. But now, for the first time in your life, you were actually failing a class.

You thought that you might actually be losing it— that all the non-stop studying you’ve been doing must be finally getting to you. All those all-nighters and sleep deprived study days, all the long readings and writing until you can’t feel your hand— you might have finally achieved what they call ‘burnout’. 

No, that just couldn’t be right. Every other prof handed you A’s without a fight, but professor Sylus? The bastard had you fighting a war you were never meant to win—just to leave you with failing grades and nothing to show for it.

Though despite his harsh grading style, he was a good professor—there was no doubt about that. Always so clear and concise with his assignment instructions, answering every single question he was asked during lecture, and always providing his students with the most thorough and meticulous feedback. Yes, he sure was a good and generous professor—to everyone but you.

If it weren’t for your disappointing grades, one might say you were actually his best student. Sitting in the very first row of his class, listening so attentively to every word he spoke with that deep, soothing voice of his, and always wearing a cute lil’ skirt, paired with thigh high socks. Perfect student? Your grades might suggest otherwise but at least you managed to look the part.  

Professor Sylus however, didn’t see you that way. Sure, you always had interesting points to add to his lecture and great questions to ask him, but god, he couldn’t lie to himself— your too good, eager to learn attitude fucking pissed him off. Always raising your hand with that stupid excitement every time he asked a question, never forgetting to thank him after class like the good student you were, and looking like a little fucking whore — jesus, it drove him nuts.

And that’s exactly why he failed you— you were just too good. His gaze lingered on you anytime he returned a grade to you, watching your brows furrow and your face twist with confusion through his piercing red eyes. He didn’t mean to look—but fuck, he always did. Your frustration simply amused him. 

This little game of his might be wrong— some might even call it unethical, but he couldn’t help it. Some fucked up part of him wanted to see just how far a perfect student like you would go for a passing grade—what kind of unspeakable lines you’d cross to get what you wanted.  

You clutched the paper in your hand, crumpling it up, as the hours of painstaking writing—to meet his absurd instructions and demands— became absolutely meaningless. Looking up, you found him leaning with his arms crossed on the wooden lectern, looking at you through watchful eyes— lips pulled into an amused, lazy smirk. Fucking bastard. 

The class was finally over and people were slowly pouring out of the room, everyone leaving with graded papers in hand. Throwing your own, now, crumpled paper in your bag, you stood up, walking up to the front of the class. Sylus looked like he’d been waiting ages for this moment. 

“Sir, do you mind if I speak to you about my grade?” you ask, trying to keep your erratic emotions under control. You were fuming. Without a doubt, you deserved an A for that paper. But what really got to you was how effortlessly confident he looked, fully knowing he was failing you. 

“What, not happy with your grade?” he drawled slowly, his tall frame towering over you, studying you intently through his thin, frameless glasses. 

“To be honest sir, not at all. I was just wondering if you could give me some feedback” you replied, eyes fixed on your hands, nervously twiddling your thumbs, too afraid to meet his burning gaze. 

“I'll be at the university charity event until later this evening, you can come by my office afterwards. Room 305” he said flatly, his eyes wandering over your body, scanning over your ridiculously slutty outfit. Looking up at him, you nodded, giving him a quick “thank you” before leaving the room. His self-assured demeanor had a way of making your confidence flawlessly melt away. It disgusted you.

The rest of your day was spent in nervous anticipation, drifting in and out of focus during every class. You spent too much time in your head, thinking and crafting the perfect things to say to your professor—desperately hoping that he would be reasonable enough to raise your grade.

Hours later, with the sun sinking low in the sky and your head weighed down by the stress of your day, you finally found yourself planted in front of the dark brown wood door that was labelled as room 305. Nervous sweat beaded at your forehead as you stood there, arms glued at your sides, fingernails digging into your palms. This was fucking nerve wracking. You lifted a trembling knuckle to the door, lightly knocking before hearing a faint “Come in.”

Walking into the office, you saw your professor sitting behind his desk, wearing just a half buttoned dress shirt, rolled up at the sleeves— holding that same, mocking red pen between his fingers. 

“Sit” was all he said without looking up from his page, pointing to the red leather armchair that stood in front of his desk. Red eyes, red leather chair and ridiculous red ink. Sitting down, you pressed your thighs together, placing your hands nervously in your lap. Your stomach felt like it was running laps—fluttering and twisting from the anxiety.

His office was pristine and expensive, just like him—decorated throughout with rich red, gold, and black accents. Not a speck of dust could be found in sight—the only semblance of a mess being visible on his dark, wooden desk. Books and stacks of papers to grade were scattered across it, with a pack of those awful red pens on top—almost like they were placed there just to mock you.

“You wanted to see me?” he questioned, scribbling comments on the paper he was currently grading—clearly too occupied to meet your eyes. You shifted nervously in your seat, reaching down to retrieve your crumpled paper from your bag. 

“Y-Yes, I was wondering what I could have done differently on my essay” you replied, noting how silly and small his pen looked in contrast to his big, slender hands. Sighing, he put it down, his red eyes finally shifting to meet your own. A warm rush made its way up your cheeks, turning them a light shade of pink. With a long finger, he adjusted his glasses higher up the bridge of his nose, then folded his arms across his broad chest.

Finally, your professor spoke up. “Fix your spelling” was all he said, leaning back in his chair, not sparing your paper a second glance. Your eyes widened. That was it? All he had to say was to fix your spelling?

“But sir, I don’t think I had any spelling mistakes, I read my paper over at least ten times before handing it in,” you countered. You weren’t one to argue about your grades—it wasn’t in your nature, but fuck, was this starting to piss you off. 

“Fix your punctuation then” he said lazily, clearly putting little to no effort into the feedback he was giving you. What could he say to such a perfect student like yourself? There was nothing he could have asked you to improve. 

“I also looked over that before submitting my paper” you protested, growing angry with his lazy attitude. This is not how you expected this to go. 

“Then fix whatever else needs to be fixed” he stated plainly, still leaned back in his chair, watching the growing anger spread across your face with a calm, measured gaze.

“I don't understand” you huffed hopelessly. He was impossible. But fine, if he wanted to play this stupid game, you would play.

He hummed lightly, a playful smile pulling at his lips. Sylus was enjoying this—maybe a little too much. Standing up, he walked from behind his desk to the right side of the room, towards the big wall of bookshelves. Your eyes carefully followed him, watching his slender fingers trail slowly over the books.

“I’m sorry sir, I just don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. I’m frustrated because no matter what I do, my work never seems to please you” you admitted quietly, lowering your eyes back down to your fidgeting hands—a nervous habit of yours—that no matter what you did, you couldn’t seem to break. 

Sylus chuckled a deep laugh. “Please me? Your work is always a pleasure to read.” he replies smoothly, his surprising compliment sending an unusual warm sliver of hope mixed with pleasure down your spine.

Sylus was testing you—playing with you. He’d become too invested in this little game of his and now he finally had you pinned down right where he wanted you—at his mercy.

“Then what can I do to get a better grade in your class?” you ask, muttering the question quietly. For the second time just today, tears were threatening to escape your eyes. 

Gaze still locked on your nervous hands, you didn’t actually notice him walk across the room. Flinching slightly, you felt him place his hands on either side of the leather armchair behind you, bringing his lips close to your ear—his warm breath sending goosebumps racing over your trembling skin. Frozen in place, you anxiously awaited his next move.

“Don’t you get it? Only good girls get good grades.” you felt his soft whisper hit the shell of your ear. This was so wrong, he was too close to you—closer than a professor should ever get to his student. But if this was so wrong, why were your thighs pressed against each other, desperately trying to suppress your warm arousal from settling in your panties? 

Speechless, you were unsure of what to say. His tone hovered just on the edge of seduction, and you felt his gaze on you—sharp and deliberate, as if he were studying you. Sylus was lingering on the brink of sweet and forbidden temptation, waiting to see if you’d step in with him. 

He moved his head to the other side of yours, his warm, steady breath now tickling your other ear. 

“Awww, has the kitten lost her claws?” he said, his taunt a mere whisper, ghosting over your skin. That you had. Your anger had begun to dissipate, slowly being overridden by an unfamiliar feeling of arousal. Every shift in his movements, every word he spoke, blurred the line between right and wrong a little more.

“S-Sir” was all you managed to utter. He was hovering over you, gently running his finger tips up and down the length of the arm chair. Your own hands were clutching onto the hem of your skirt, fidgeting nervously with the fabric. 

“What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?” he asked mockingly, raising an amused eyebrow at your stunned, silent state. 

You were heavily debating the ethical implications of your current situation. On one hand, you were a fair student—one who’d never go as far as fuck her professor for a better grade. On the other hand, it couldn’t be a coincidence that you only dressed the way you did for professor Sylus’s class, only answered his questions with that stupid excitement, and only ever went as far as you currently found yourself—just for him. Fuck, this was already bordering on morally wrong, but you couldn’t deny the fluttering feeling you felt low in your core— the slick coating your panties. There was truly no denying the fact that you craved your disgustingly attractive professor's attention and praise. 

Dropping your head down lower, you managed to mutter out the most pathetic question you’d probably ever asked, “Am I not good enough sir?” 

Letting out a quiet laugh, he walked in front of where you were sitting, easily pushing your pressed thighs apart with just his leg. Warm fingers met with your chin, tilting your head up to look at him. Sylus was nearly twice your size and absurdly tall, forcing you to crane your neck just to meet his gaze.

“You’re arguably my best student”

“Sir, I���”

“But what kind of good student dresses like a little whore? What kind of good student comes begging her professor for better grades? Hm?” he cuts you off, lightly tugging on your bottom lip with the pad of his thumb. You try to stop your restless trembling, try to stop the arousal from running through your body—but it's no use, those red, hungry eyes can see right through you—can see how worked up he has you. 

“Open up, kitten” he taps your chin and your mouth falls open, lips parting for him without question. Sylus has finally crossed that deliciously dangerous line—and you crossed it right with him. 

He pushes his thumb into your mouth, smiling as you eagerly wrap your wet lips around it, playfully swirling it with your tongue. He chuckles at the drastic switch up in your attitude—going from angry to obedient within minutes. 

Placing his other hand on the chair beside your head, he removes his finger from your mouth with a little ‘pop’. Sylus puts a knee on the chair between your legs, and brushes his fingertips down your skin, letting them travel to your thigh. His eyes are locked on yours, not wanting to miss a single flicker of emotion that crosses them.

You gasp at the feeling of his fingers meeting your inner thigh, gently squeezing and playing with its soft skin.

“Tell me something sweetie. Do you dress like this for every professor?” his voice a low, sultry whisper. Another wave of arousal courses through you, now passing through your soaked panties and settling in the armchair. Oops. 

“N-No sir” you reply breathlessly, too busy relishing in his warm, electric touch. Sylus moves his hand further under your ridiculously short skirt, long fingers meeting with your lacy, drenched panties. 

“Oh? She’s wet.” he purrs his surprise in your ear, and you think you might cum right then and there. His voice is so hot it’s fucking dangerous. You’d already crossed a line you swore you never would—but you hadn’t expected to get addicted so soon.

Your panties are pushed aside and two long fingers find their way into your dripping pussy. “Fuck” you moan at the intrusion, hand grabbing onto his strong arm that rests on the chair beside your head. 

“Such filthy words, kitten” he clicks his tongue mockingly, gently using two fingers to push every smart, coherent thought out of your brain.

“Sorry s-sir” you mutter the apology, ready to do anything to please him—anything to get that A. 

You whimper at a third finger being added into your tight cunt, your whole body already feeling overstimulated from all the attention. Sylus lets out a degrading laugh, enjoying watching you squirm from his fingers. So worked up already, how were you going to take his cock? 

“Too much already?” he lowers his lips to yours, mumbling the mocking taunt against them. You whine, pathetically rutting your hips up against his hand. You’re desperate for it—desperate for his touch. You had spent so many classes dreaming about this moment, fantasizing about what it would be like—now that you finally had it, you didn’t want to let go.

Sylus is thoroughly enjoying this—watching your chest heavily rise and fall with every shallow breath, struggling to keep your eyes open and fighting against the pleasure—it was the only thing he ever wanted to see.

The pleasure pulses through your body as you feel your climax quickly approaching. Throwing your head back on the chair, you let out pleasurable mewls and moans as Sylus’s fingers speed up their pace inside you. You finally meet your blissful end when his thumb lands softly on your clit, rubbing and playing with it. The fucker knew all too well what he was doing— dangling your orgasm on the edge like that. 

“Mmh—ah, fuck” you breathe out the moan, feeling the string of pleasure in your core finally snap. You arch your back off the chair, pulsing as you release your warm cum all over his fingers.

“That’s a good kitty” he pulls his fingers out, and you yelp when he lands a harsh slap on your swollen pussy. Amusement flickers in his eyes—did you really think he’d hand it all over to you without a fight? Stupid kitten.

Lifting his wet fingers to your neck, you feel him wiping them against the stretch of it, spreading your cum all over your bare skin. 

Your head tilts easily to the side with two of his fingers, allowing him better access to the exposed, glistening skin of your neck. He begins licking your cum off of it, dragging his tongue up and down—quickly pushing you right back into a state of arousal. It’s just too much. His mouth reaches the base of your neck, grazing his teeth over it before unexpectedly biting down, making you cry out.  

“Sir ah—”

A hand quickly clasps over your mouth, shutting you up. Sylus releases your pulsing skin from his sharp teeth, lightly nuzzling his face in your neck before moving his lips back to your ear.

“Shhh kitten, wouldn’t want anyone hearing your feedback would you?” he whispers, finishing off with a little nibble on your earlobe. 

That’s right. If someone heard you, you would likely be expelled and Professor Sylus would be fired—never to see a classroom again. But somehow the thrill of getting caught made it all the more exciting for you.

“N-No sir” you answer, keeping your voice quiet and small. 

Without another word, Sylus grabs your waist, scooping you up into his arms. Your breath hitches from the sudden motion as he switches your positions on his chair, sitting himself down in your place, and placing you in his lap. He’s so fucking big, your legs can’t quite straddle both of his—so you adjust, sliding onto one thick thigh instead.

Sylus groans at your shift, feeling his hard erection poking through his tight pants. You look down, devilishly smiling at it, suddenly sensing a flicker of control return to you. Looks like you’re not the only one who’s all worked up.

“Professor, is this the kind of feedback you give all your students?” you ask teasingly, purposely dragging out every word in the sentence.

His eyes darken, and you can almost feel his gaze burning right through you. “Just you” he replies rather possessively, tightening his grip on your waist. You make a mental note of this minor crack in his composure. Interesting.

Bringing your face closer to his, your lips hover over his—realizing you hadn’t even kissed him yet. Sylus had made you cum before even kissing you.

A big hand travels to the nape of your neck, pulling you down closer to him. Your lips crash onto his—the two of you quickly entering a fight for control. Naturally, Sylus wins, kissing you ravenously and passionately, claiming every inch of your mouth as his. 

“You know sweetie, my job is in your hands” he pulls away momentarily, muttering the almost pleading words against your lips. Another fracture in that carefully built composure—he was finally grasping the gravity of the situation.

You press your forehead to his, closing in the space between you. “And my degree is in yours” you whisper before pressing your desperate lips back on his—mind too clouded with lust to discuss what stupid things the pair of you had done.

Desperate for his touch again, you start rubbing yourself on his thigh, urgently grinding—hips begging for more. Letting your hand travel to his bulge, you feel Sylus tense briefly, before melting into your touch, allowing you to paw at him like a kitten as much as you pleased. 

Sylus never expected himself to go down this road—his favorite student grinding desperately on his lap, palming his cock and begging for his attention—it was ridiculous. By no means does Sylus consider himself a saint, but this certainly was a new step in his constant battle with morality. Now he had truly fucked up. 

Long fingers tug at the hem of your shirt, letting him pull it over your head, leaving you in just your cute pink lacy bra. He easily unclasps it with one hand, exposing your bare chest to him. He groans at the sight of your hardening nipples, his eyes displaying quite possibly the hungriest expression you’d ever seen. 

Fingers meet with your nipples, and he pinches, letting a painful whimper escape your lips. His hands begin squishing them softly, soothing the tingling pain. He wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer. With his composure slowly crumbling, and you getting hotter and more worked up by the minute—he just couldn’t do it. 

“Fuck” he grunts, waiting no longer to pick you up and lay you down on the desk. You prop yourself up on your elbows, watching Sylus quickly push off all the papers and pens around you, creating as much room as he needs to do whatever he desires with you. 

You swore you felt the air around you change—suddenly becoming overbearingly hot and thick with lust. Sylus had a raw, animalistic energy about him—an insatiable hunger that he desperately needed to fix. 

He bunches your skirt up around your waist, pushing your panties aside with just his thumb. “Fuck, kitten you’re already fucking wet again” he growls, fisting his thick length through his pants. You moan, letting yourself surrender to the pleasure of his fingers yet again—surprised when it doesn't feel the same. Clearly, your desperate need has grown. Your pussy is soaked and swollen, begging for a much bigger form of attention. 

As if reading your mind, he unbuttons his pants, letting his thick, hard, cock pop out before you. You audibly gasp at the sight, admiring his full length—practically drooling at the thought of all that being inside of you. He’s fucking huge.

“I-Is that going to fit?” you stutter stupidly, eyes glued on the sight of his cock. 

“You’ll be a good girl and take it all won’t you?” he replies in a low, husky voice, looking at you through half-lidded, lust filled eyes. Your wide-eyed expression amuses him more than it should—and he can’t help but admire it.

“I-I’ll try my best” you reply, nervous, yet so desperately eager to please.

He grabs your thighs, pulling you closer to where he stands at the edge of the desk. Sylus lowers his mouth to your panties, biting down on them and slowly pulling them off using just his teeth. You shudder a little, feeling another flush of need ripple through your body. 

He studies you intently, admiring every curve and inch of your exposed skin. Your cheeks flush, trying to close your legs out of embarrassment. 

He doesn’t let you though, instead, he lifts your legs, placing one on each of his shoulders—essentially rendering you helpless under his touch. His cock head prods at your entrance— thick and leaking with precum. 

“Ready, kitten?” he adds in a thick voice, leaning down closer to you, almost folding you in half. You nod quickly— practically reeling with impatience. 

A long whine escapes your lips as he pushes just the tip in, pulse hammering as you struggle to handle the stretch. You bite down hard on your lip, feeling a metallic taste fill your mouth. There was no way it was going all in. No fucking way. But it would. Sylus would make it fit. 

“So tight kitten, I’ve only put the tip in and you’re struggling already?” he asks in between ragged breaths, slowly pushing his cock further in. 

“Sylus—sir p-please wait” you rasp out, overwhelmed by the stretch. He’s not even halfway in and tears are already beading at the corners of your rolled back eyes—and you couldn’t help feeling like you were being split in half. 

“I didn’t know we were on a first name basis now, kitten. I have to say, I enjoy hearing my name on your lips” he drawls, wrapping a hand around your neck, squeezing it lightly. 

“I-I’m sorry” comes out as a pathetic, breathy stutter as you ball your fists, desperately clutching on to the air around you. You’ve never felt so stretched out before, so blissfully full. 

He slowly pushes the rest of his thick cock in, coating it in your slick. Your back arches off the desk and you moan, finally letting those tears escape your blurry eyes. You can’t form a single coherent sentence or thought anymore—he’s pushed that ability out of you entirely with his cock. 

“Crying already?” he mocks, wiping a tear with his thumb. He’s so mean, mocking and teasing your every expression, fully aware of what he’s doing to you. Being at your professors mercy like this—it’s actually humiliating, but also so fucking arousing.

“Please d-don’t move” you inhale sharply, trying your best to adjust to both his length and his width. He removes his other hand from the desk, pushing down on your stomach, admiring the bulge visible through your skin. He has you filled so nicely, the curve of him pushing up beneath your skin, marking you from both inside and out.

Your pathetic please falls on deaf ears, and he starts slowly moving his hips in and out of you, hitting your sweet spot with the head of his cock over and over again. You choke out a sob between moans, barely keeping your eyes open. 

“Eyes on me, kitten” his voice pulls you out of your trance. Your eyelids feel so heavy but you obey, noticing how every thrust makes his glasses slide a little further down the bridge of nose. The sight was erotic. 

His pace was absolutely agonizing. The sheer stretch of him, paired with everything else, left you impossibly overstimulated— moaning and whimpering around his cock. The room was filled with lewd sounds, echoing and bouncing off the walls, every moan and groan reminding you of the forbidden moment the two of you found yourselves in.

“Nngh—Sylus, fuck” you whine, unable to take all the pleasure. It was too much all at once. 

“What is it sweetie? You’re doing so well” he purrs, lifting his hand from your throat to brush a stray strand of hair from your face. How sweet. 

You look so blissfully fucked out. Your forehead is glistening with sweat, eyes drooping low and voice slowly losing itself to the pleasure coursing through you. Of all the things Sylus had seen, this? This was truly unforgettable.

His pace was bordering on frantic—the feeling of his tip hitting your cervix was literally tearing you apart. “P-Please, I’m gonna come” you cry out in between harsh sobs—feeling like you were being held captive by the pleasure—unable to rip away.

“Go on” is all he says before your body releases, convulsing from pleasure, your sweet orgasm finally crashing over you. Toes curl in your shoes, and your hand grabs onto his, gripping him so tight your knuckles begin to turn white. Sylus only chuckles at your quivering body, and continues fucking into you until he reaches his own high.

“N-no more, please, no more” you whine, desperately trying to push him away when he doesn’t stop mercilessly pounding into you. 

“You can take it, kitten” he replies with a grunt, slowing down his pace as he approaches his climax.

“Shit—” you barely hear him mutter under his breath, as his cock begins to throb inside of you, releasing thick strands of his own cum inside you warm walls. His breathing is shallow, glasses barely holding onto his nose, as he drops his head down, keeping himself buried deep inside you. 

You both stay there a while longer, catching your breath and letting the last pulses of pleasure escape your shuddering bodies. Sylus finally pulls out of you, and you prop yourself up on trembling elbows. 

“Aren’t you going to clean up your mess?” he asks—your eyes visibly widening as you instantly understand what he means. 

Sylus takes a step back from the desk, sitting back down in that damn red armchair. You barely manage to slide off the desk, almost stepping on that mocking pack of red pens— which have now made their home on the ground after Sylus had pushed them off the desk. Fuck those red pens. Fuck the colour red. 

He leans back lazily, a playful smirk pulled on his lips. You drop to your knees in front of him, wrapping two hands around his half-hard cock. Your tongue meets the tip and you begin to kitten lick every drop of cum, cleaning every inch of it like the good girl you were. 

When you finish, Sylus zips himself back up, and tilts your head up with two fingers. 

“Good kitty” he purrs, gently rubbing his thumb along your jaw. 

“Sir?” you ask after a brief moment of silence, looking up into those burning red eyes.

“Hm?”

“A-About my grade” you trail off nervously. Kneeling before him like this, the weight of your own desperation burned bright on your cheeks—it was fucking humiliating.

He’d been waiting for you to ask him the burning question—seeing how far you went before you begged for a better grade.

“Didn’t I tell you? Only good girls get good grades” he echoes his earlier words, voice so sweet it was practically dripping with honey. 

“I don’t understand?” 

“Good girls don’t fuck their professors for A’s”

© @blessedmisery 2025

[delilahsturniolo]

⋆˚࿔ ୨୧ professor!matt bending you over his desk after class

(dirty talk, backshots, unprotected sex, pet names, degradation.)

the classroom is filled with an energizing buzz, a blend of youthful chatter and the rustling of textbooks and pages flipping. matt, your professor, steps up to the lectern with an assured stance, his sharp features and commanding presence immediately demanding attention. the light from the overhead projector casts an enchanting glow on his chiseled face, accentuating the small laugh lines around his almond-shaped eyes.

you sit in the back, deliberately choosing the most provocative outfit you own, a short, tight skirt that barely covers your curves, and a tight blouse that accentuates your ample breasts. the cool air of the lecture hall causes goosebumps to form on your skin, making your nipples harden beneath the thin fabric. the anticipation sends a ripple of desire coursing through your veins as you adjust your glasses, the lenses glinting under the harsh fluorescent lights.

matt begins the lecture, his voice deep and authoritative, filling the room. you watch him intently, imagining his hands tracing down your curves, his fingers teasing your aching pussy. each time his eyes meet yours, there's an unspoken promise of something more, something sinful and forbidden.

the lecture finally ends, and matt dismisses the class. as students pack their bags and exit the room, you remain seated, allowing the possibility of privacy to unfold. the last student files out, leaving you alone with matt. you rise from your seat, swaying your hips seductively as you approach him.

"professor sturniolo," you begin, your voice a purr as you lean against his desk, your breasts barely inches from his face. "i'm not entirely satisfied with my grade. might there be a way to... improve it?"

matt adjusts his tie, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “yeah? what don’t you like about your grade, sweetheart?” he teased, knowing how that pet name got to you. “it’s a 70, sir. you gave me a 70.”

��so?”

“so, maybe i could…get some extra credit somehow?” you smiled, purposefully showing off your breasts and your ass with the outfit you wore. matt’s eyes darken as he looks up at you, a small smirk playing on his lips. "is that so?" he replies, standing up to close the distance between you. his large hands grip your waist, pulling you against his firm body.

you can feel his erection pressing against you through his trousers, a clear indication of his desire. his hands roam over your body, squeezing your ass before sliding up to cup your breasts. he pinches your nipples through the fabric of your blouse, drawing a moan from your lips.

"bend over for me," he orders, his voice husky with lust.

you comply, bending over his desk and spreading your legs. he pushes up your skirt, exposing your bare ass to the cold air of the lecture hall. his fingers tease along the edge of your panties before tugging them down your legs.

matt steps behind you, his hands gripping your hips tightly. you feel the head of his cock pressing against your wet folds, teasing your entrance before he thrusts into you with a powerful groan. the sensation is overwhelming, his thick cock filling you completely, stretching you in the most delicious way. you moan at the stretch. “you’re gonna have to behave if you want that extra credit baby, be quiet yeah? don’t want anyone hearing how desperate and pathetic you are, don’t we now?”

you nod frantically, he begins to move, setting a punishing rhythm that has you moaning and writhing on his desk. each thrust hits deeper than the last, sparking waves of pleasure throughout your body. his hands leave your hips to grasp your breasts, his fingers pinching your nipples as he fucks you relentlessly.

the sound of flesh meeting flesh echoes in the empty classroom, mixed with your moans and his grunts. you can feel his cock throbbing inside you, his pace quickening as he nears his climax. “f—fuck, matt!” you cry, he shushes you, leaning down to whisper in your ear. “that’s professor sturniolo to you, sweetheart.”

with a final thrust, matt spills his hot seed inside you, filling you to the brim. he leans over you, panting heavily as he presses a kiss to your neck. "i think this should definitely improve your grade," he whispers, his breath hot against your skin.

you both stand up, straightening your clothes as you catch your breath. a sense of satisfaction settles over you, not just from the intense pleasure, but from the knowledge that this scandalous encounter will surely secure your academic success. “better head to your next class, don’t wanna be late now..” matt taunted, brushing himself off and walking away from you.

© delilahsturniolo

💌: WOAH WOAH OKAY HIII!! not even joking as soon as i saw these pictures i JUMPED over to my keyboard and got to work…i have like 5 other drafts i was losing my mind over these photos LMAOO

[occamstfs]

Evo Bio 101

Annoyed at the prospect of wasting time during his simple lectures, Craig's misplaced ambitions lead to a first hand lesson in (d)evolutionary biology.

Was possessed by the idea and couldn't not write it haha! Here's a story taking hair growth and brutification to the extreme ! Hope you enjoy! -Occam

It’s not that Craig didn’t want to teach the class, he was grateful to have a chance to instruct on anything even remotely close to his research area. Intro to Evolutionary Biology was directly in his wheelhouse and given how cutthroat his department was he was more than happy to jump at the chance.

It’s just- the class was so introductory it’s insulting. The course is required for all students in the university’s tiny biological anthropology program and judging by the recommended syllabus given to him by the department head, there’s not a day where Craig is going to teach his students anything they don’t already know.

Complaining under his breath as he makes his way to the classroom across campus, the doctoral candidate wonders if any of his undergraduates are even going to show up given how remedial the material seems. Kicking the air he wishes to himself that he’ll get the chance to teach them something novel. To show them what their field is all about, how man became man rather than droll lectures on Darwin’s finches and Mendel’s peas.

As soon as he utters the words to no one he shivers and his skin prickles with goosebumps before he fully stumbles over himself just outside the classroom door. There’s a quiet buzzing in the air and he looks around to find its source before noticing the time on an overhead clock and realizing he’s already late. Bumbling into the classroom he adjusts his tie and apologizes as he rushes to get his laptop set up.

“Sorry guys! Always forget these dinky 101 courses are relegated to the middle of nowhere,” there are a few quiet laughs but the lecturer is sure they’re just trying to appease him. He knows because he’s laughed at countless half-jokes from professors over the years. Craig continues to awkwardly mumble to the class as he waits for his equipment to bootup. After getting his introductory powerpoint running he wipes his brow and for the first time turns to look at his small class.

It’s then that he notices how warm it is in the room. Wiping his forehead, his stuffy sleeve wicks sweat from his brow and he assumes it’s just from nerves at standing in front of the bored faces of students who have done nothing today but go over reading lists and play icebreakers. Might as well get this over with. “Welcome all to the intro course on Evolutionary Biology! I’ll be your instructor, Craig Stoll. See a few familiar faces around here from courses I’ve TAed, you guys can just call me Craig. I assume this is no one’s first rodeo-” 

Craig opens his mouth to slyly complain about how basic the material is, to mock the university requiring people well on their way to becoming experts in the field to waste time going over the most absolute basics. But before he can speak, it’s like his throat has been zapped free of moisture. He tries to clear his throat a couple times, stretching open his mouth in between doing so as he struggles in front of his few students. 

Smiling awkwardly as his forehead sweats even heavier under the bright lights above the lectern he turns and digs through his bag for the water bottle that scarcely leaves his side. Still turned away from the class he forces it to his lips and guzzles for a few seconds straight. After a moment he pauses and breathes heavily for a few seconds, gasping for air just as hungrily as he was gulping for water, and then he gets right back to it. Lifting the bottle perpendicular to the Earth as he drinks like he’s dying of thirst.

All students present eye him apprehensively, most of them had seen him countless times over the years sitting performatively uptight as he graded assignments and aided professors as needed. Never could they imagine him doing something so uncouth. One sophomore whispers to her neighbor, Dawson, concerned at how nervous the researcher seems. He replies mocking Craig, excited to see the meek man who gave him a 79 on a final last semester crash and burn.

Letting his bottle fall away once more there isn’t a thought in his mind questioning how peculiar what just happened was. He was thirsty, and now he no longer is. Simple. Craig turns back with a wide smile at his classroom clearing his throat once more this time successfully. He doesn’t notice how his voice echoes through the lecture hall, decidedly deeper than it should be, “Ahh, that’s better! Sorry again y’all!” 

In the front row a student motions for him to wipe his face as water is clearly dripping down his ever-so-slightly shadowed jaw. Craig’s face burns red as he does so, for the first time realizing himself that he’s acting a tad strange. This is only more apparent as he feels a burp begin to rise. He did drink that water awfully fast. Before the thought even occurs to him to silence it he lets it loose, producing the loudest burp he’s ever heard. Stunning the classroom to silence.

Even the student eager to watch Craig fail was shocked enough to grimace in second hand embarrassment as he sees the man’s eyes dull while burping like an animal in front of his class before scrambling back to his senses. “Oh jeez, I don’t know what’s gotten into me today- Let’s just, uhm, get to it.”

Directing his class’ attention to the slides he squirms and adjusts his tie with sweaty palms as he realizes how uncomfortable his clothes feel all of a sudden. Struggling to get the thing loose he grunts and flexes his feet as he suddenly feels confined. Trapped in his shoes. Shaking his head to stay focused he pointedly ignores the feeling of his toes poking the front of his dress shoes and starts lecturing.

Clicking past the introduction his brow furrows as he sees the title of the first slide of substance, ‘What is Evolutionary Biology?’ Grunting once more, Craig scratches his chest as he can’t help but address what he thinks to be the elephant in the room, unaware of the eyes staring at him as his arms seem to be stretching out from their sleeves. Not noticing as his perpetually clean shaven face suddenly begins to sprout stubbly sideburns and a scratchy neckbeard.

No, suddenly the rising anger in his mind can’t help but address how stupid it is that his boss is making him explain to these people essentially majoring in evolutionary biology what those words mean. Clenching his jaw as he yanks the tie from his neck and tosses it to the floor he speaks up, his voice clearly rougher than it was even seconds ago, “This is- You all know what evolutionary biology is, obviously,” his voice cracks deeper as he tries to remove his jacket, ignoring how it gets stuck on arms that have impossibly begun to lengthen. Hanging lower and heavier as he struggles against clothes that suddenly feel like they’re holding him captive. “You all know already!”

He hammers a fist down onto his lectern and hears the sound of his shirt tearing from the back. Students flinch in shock and a few begin to gather their things as Craig stares at his arm. His hand shouldn't be that big. Isn’t that big. Seeing the few thick hairs starting to pepper his bulkier wrists, Craig turns to look down at his chest as it begins to grow, grunting ever deeper he stares as two meaty pecs begin to strain the button-up. 

Hairs poke through the straining placket as they start to spread above the neckline. Every movement sends further sounds of tearing garment through the classroom as Craig tries to understand what he’s seeing. His voice sounds even duller, brutish even as he cries out,  “What goin- What’s, grgh, happening to me-” Thicker fingers yank off his shirt sending sweat and buttons flying into the classroom, freeing pecs that were not there even a minute ago.

Many students begin to flee the classroom as their instructor begins feeling up his chest with hands growing hairier. The student who was initially concerned dials emergency services as she ditches her laptop and begins to race out the door, terrified as Craig’s thickening brows start to just out further from his forehead. The man who was waiting to watch him awkwardly stumble over his words rather than join his fleeing cohort just watches enthralled. Staring at his widening jaw as it is promptly covered with a thick beard. 

Unaware of the small horde of students in flight from his lecture as his newly fat palms cup itching pecs as they grow meatier, Craig groans and apologizes to whoever remains as he leans underneath the small podium to deal with the sharp pain in his shoes. His ass bursts free from his pants, exposing briefs barely holding up and cheeks that are rapidly being decorated by a forest of fur. His wider back bumps into the lectern as he struggles to free his thick feet from shoes that were already a tad too snug. 

Speaking accompanied by the sound of his tearing at leather shoes, Craig tries to continue the lecture in between increasingly common grunts, “So me, unh- I think you uhhh- you know this evo- uhh” The one remaining student, Dawson, begins creeping closer, deadset to see this through to the end. Slowly pulling out his phone and setting it to record what is clearly some impossible miracle of science. Some reversion towards a more primal state, a devolution. Dawson smirks as he imagines how far this will set him ahead in the field.

Craig finds himself suddenly much less preoccupied with said science as he frees his newly hairy feet from their binds, leaving sweat steaming off of their wider soles as they continue to crack larger. Instead, mind leaking intelligence, he begins to drool and quietly grunt to himself as his cock begins to throb. Buried in a bush of thick and curled pubes which are themselves haloed by massive burly thighs, his rougher hands easily claw off his briefs to free his bobbing cock. Dripping with pre he sees veins visibly pulsing as what must be a foreskin begins to encroach towards a head almost purple and pre-covered. 

Dawson sneaks onward, zooming in to capture how Craig’s beard raises higher on his face to meet with the hair on his head growing wild. His eyes flicker across strange bulging muscles on his instructor’s shoulders as they’re rapidly blanketed by a forest of curls thicker than his own pubes. The student's mouth slightly waters as he adjusts the frame to capture the man’s massive hands as he begins to masturbate in the classroom. And then he drops his phone. 

On high alert, the man-no-longer jumps with a start and hits his head on the lectern, guffawing as he rubs the spot he foolishly bumped. Falling to the floor himself, Dawson is torn between fleeing like the rest of his wiser cohort and staring at a living breathing caveman. He can’t resist simply being the first man to witness prehistory. 

Beyond that, Dawson can’t help but stare at the exposed pits of a man he assumed was as smooth as marble. He’s almost possessed, staring at the wild jungle of pit hair that flies free from the brute’s raised arm, dripping with sweat. There are almost visible stink lines as body odor that hasn’t been found on the earth for thousands of millenia begins to fill the room. And the longer he stares, the longer he smells, he begins to lose any will to do anything but submit.

Perhaps it’s simply a biological reaction that Dawson finds himself rooted to the spot, taking in heady breaths of the fetid scent. Why else would his mouth fall open as his cock starts to rise at the sight, Craig speaks up seeing his own remaining pupil sitting there in some state between primal lust and fear. Feeling his cock bob against the podium and seeing himself nude in this clinical classroom, some semblance of self returns to the once-doctoral candidate.

“Dawsugh- Need help. Cra-ug ugh- Crag need help, nowugh” His jaw stings with pain as it widens more, his lips struggling to create sounds he knows he should be able to. As he stares down on the male planted on the ground he feels those bizarre instincts begin to return once more. His skin prickles, back cracking as it compacts while his chest grows wider with every heaving breath. Putting on mass as his mind begins to grow foggy once more.

Crag struggles to stay focused, struggles to remember who he is, what he’s doing. What that strange rectangle is at this lesser man’s feet. But with every precious second his twenty-first century concerns begin to evaporate. Worries about the grind of academia, disdain at being shoehorned into reading powerpoints no one cares to hear, the monotony of driving home in rush hour traffic. Everything begins to fade. Everything that is, besides the need to dominate the hairless, beta man staring at him.

Dawson can scarcely make heads or tails of what happens next as he sees the brute pounce on him. He feels the man’s calloused hands tear at his clothes and lies in repose, waiting for whatever Crag, apparently, is to do next. Desperately wanting fulfillment no man has experienced before. His hands clutch the caveman-apparent’s back, feeling the scratch of hair thicker than man can grow and the bulging sticky muscle beneath. 

Feeling the man’s river of precum dripping down his abs, Dawson begins to feel the prickle of his treasure trail regrowing as his feverish mind realizes his future far too late. Every inch of skin touching the man begins to change likewise. Arms he was never shy of lengthen just as he saw his least favorite TA’s did minutes ago, decorated with hair and bulging larger with thick muscle. 

Even quicker than he witnessed happening to Craig er, Crag, hair begins to engulf him. The concerted efforts towards maintaining his clean-cut appearance is absolutely erased as every inch of his form prickles with thick, dark hair growth. Crag sloppily kisses him and leaves a growing beard in the wake of his tongue. Forearms that have had the lightest coat of blonde peach fuzz erupt with fark jungles of hair before launching even further, coating his increasingly clumsy fingers and biceps twitching stronger with every haphazard movement.

Dawson’s hips reflexively hump into the man dominating him. His changing cock scratches against the man’s essentially fur covered torso which only heightens the student’s rapturous delight and accelerates his transformation. In no time at all the complexities and desires of the life he lived are wiped and replaced by a need to do nothing more than seek sustenance and pleasure. To serve and be served by the Crag who begins to hoist him against a wall and hump.

His handsome face changes, bones restructuring as hands he doesn’t recognize as he clings to Crag who is more monster than man. Feeling his rising cock rubbing against his new alpha’s as it begins to change he knows he is on the fast track to join him. He feels his vocal chords thickening as he cries out in ecstasy, Crag finally claiming what is his. Longer toes burst through tennis shoes, curling on the floor as nails yellow and thicken. 

Dawson’s sharper and larger teeth bite Crag’s shoulder as they continue to frot and fuck. They continue until their sweat and ancient semen coats much of the room, their new balls having apparently quite the short refractory period. When they finally tire or get bored their snores sound loud enough to break glass as they curl up together somewhere behind the podium. Bonded mates of a world that hasn’t existed for hundreds of thousands of years.

Well before the pair were done with consummating their new forms, the whole building was placed on lockdown. Quarantine crews working hastily to contain whatever impossible pathogen has apparently begun to infect the campus. Scientists across the world wait with bated breath from some update on whatever impossible goings on are hidden behind that yellow quarantine tape. Hearing the horrified testimonies of those students that escape does little to sate their curiosities, though it does invite them to be lab rats as scientists watch each and every one of them hoping to observe their own prehistoric changes.

It’s only a matter of time before some foolhardy explorer or researcher desperate for a discovery breaks the seal and finds something they could never be prepared for. Sooner rather than later the mounting need to know will be insurmountable. Sooner rather than later whatever this plague of the past they tried to keep behind lock and key will spread. And then those foolish enough to remain nearby will get a first hand experience on the nature of evolutionary biology. And to think, Craig Stoll was so concerned that nothing of note would come of the course.

[starkeyszn]

PROFESSOR CAMERON ⌇

pairing: professor!rafe x student!reader

notes: reader will be referred to as ‘doll’

her girl best-friends were begging her to go out that night, they complained how she ‘always’ has her head in a book studying for finals and never make any time herself.

“you need to live a little!” mia exclaimed, as she stood in the doorframe.

doll didn’t know how they convinced her but she currently stood in-front of her lengthy mirror in her bedroom, looking herself up and down, pulling her skirt down so it doesn’t rise to show her pants. the outfit that her friends picked is something that she was sure she wouldn’t have picked by herself.

the gold mini skirt was just an accessory at this point, it was barely covering anything, and her tits was about to pop out from her white corset top.

so here doll was, at the club, lip’s glossed to hell and hip hugging skirt. she was currently sitting on the velvet couch, her legs crossed.

the club pulsed with music, enough for her to hear her heart beating out of her chest. bodies were pressed together, people making out in the corner, drunk singing coming from the crowds, drinks being passed around.

doll’s drink glittered with sugar on the rim, sweet and laced with just enough to loosen her shoulders.

that’s when she made eye contact with him.

tall figure, broad-shoulders, blue eyes staring right at her, he looked rich, like he didn’t belong in a club like this.

their eyes locked for a moment, his head tilted, a sign he was amused she caught him in the act—staring right at her.

he pushed himself off the bar, and started to make his way towards her. she swallowed, straightening herself. “you always stare at strangers like that?” he teased, his eyes flickered up and down, not disrespectful, but curious.

doll shook her head, swallowing her drink, “you’re one to talk.”

his raised his arms in defence, a smug grin on his face, “well, i only stare when they’re the best looking woman in the room.”

she arched an brow, “woman? not girl?”

“you don’t look like a girl, you look like someone who doesn’t play games.” rafe’s tone dropped, as he took a swig of his drink.

she let her fingers trail the rim of her glass, “just the ones i don’t win.”

he called her doll before she even introduced herself, when he introduced himself as rafe, her stomach flipped. it may of been the alcohol, but she could feel her cheeks growing warm.

their chemistry was reckless, it was undeniable, a instant pull was between them. the night blended into hotel sheets, and quiet gasps, no names behind that, no questions. just them stuck to each other, heavy breaths, duvets over their heads.

the dim lighting made everything look softer, her back hitting the wall the moment rafe shut the hotel door shut. he kissed her like he meant it—slow, at first, before turning hungry. like he was waiting for someone like her.

the kind of night you keep to yourself, a night you convince yourself you dreamt.

until monday.

the lecture hall buzzed with whispers, students glancing around, staring straight at the empty lectern—their old professor had retired, they needed somebody new.

“apparently he’s hot!” one of the girls on doll’s row whispered. “finally a reason to show up.” mia joked.

doll laughed softly to herself, flipping her planner open. then he strolled through the door, his head held high.

she dropped her pen, her breath caught, she couldn’t tear her eyes away.

those same ocean eyes, same sinful mouth, the man from the club!

professor cameron it was to everyone else, but not to her, it couldn’t be.

mia turned to doll, noticing her pink cheeks, “you alright?” she asked. doll turned to her, exhaling a breath, “perfect.”

his gaze swept the room, landing on her, lingering for a second to long. his jaw clenched, a sign he noticed her. of course he did.

how was she going to get through this lecture? knowing she was moaning her professor’s name, not even just 2 days ago.

some things are sweeter when they’re left unspoken.

STARKEYSZN — 2025 new rafe blurb/one shot <3 actually kinda like this … ? 🍨

requests are open ╱ anon emojis are open

[eowynstwin]

professor price

professor price x reader. age gap. older man/younger woman. pining. pre-relationship. jealousy. angst. guilt. voyeurism. mvp alejandro. lightly explicit. - A Christmas gift to my friend @guyfieriii, centered around her own Professor Price au from all the way back in early 2023. I have linked each fic of hers that I reference in this work—highly recommend you check them out.

The first day of class you’re in the front row—center seat.

Old instincts never really retire even if the body leaves the field; a moment’s evaluation opens you like a book. Pencil pouch on your desk, set parallel to the edge. Syllabus in the middle, creased at the stapled corner but otherwise pristine. Water bottle at the corner, solid blue.

You: hair neat. Wearing clean slacks and a knitted sweater like a uniform, ankles crossed, buckled straps of your Mary-Janes intersecting in an obtuse V. Like a flock of birds in formation, flying southwards for the winter. There’s a curated look to you, a careful arrangement of details meant to declare the essence of who you are and what you’re about.

It’s clear immediately; from only a glance.

You’re a good girl.

The eager-to-please kind. The five A-levels kind. The kind who does her bonus assignments because they’re available, not because she needs them. Prim, polished, ironed at the creases.

Straight from a 90s teen drama, or porn of an equal vintage.

You meet his eyes—

And Price knows how it goes.

Boredom and professional stagnancy are the bane of active men. Men with egos. Men who long to fix things. Men who have reached the heights of every achievement now looking for the next peak to summit.

It’s the curse of middle age’s collision with machismo. How does a man prove his masculinity when there’s no proving left to be done? When the panopticon has finally turned its eyes away, satisfied at his self-regulation enough not to constantly surveil it?

Suddenly the performance can end, if he wants it to. Only, if it ends, how does the actor not disappear, when the role is the only identity he’s ever had?

In academia, the answer is—of course—simple:

Fuck a student.

And oh. It’s right there, in those wide, sweet eyes, looking up at him with the reflexive veneration of a star student.

You’re begging to be fucked.

Fucked right. Fucked by someone who knows what he’s doing. Fucked so good that it upends every clean line of you, like breaking furniture, like smashing crystal. Fucked crying, whimpering, groaning beyond recognizable language, sweaty and gross until it’s impossible to tell whether or not his body and yours have begun to fuse.

Fucked the way no snot-nosed twenty-something twat, the age-appropriate kind that sleeps in the back of his lecture hall and then emails him at the end of every semester begging for extra credit to fix his grade, could possibly fuck you.

He holds your gaze for too long. You smile at him, shyly, and he gives you a brusque nod before distracting himself with the papers on his lectern.

You’re too young for him.

Not that it matters.

Price is all about lines. Stark delineations between will and won’t. Before his untimely retirement, the lines had meant everything. They separated the kind of man he was from the kind of man he did not want to be, and they kept those men separate, even when the distance from one to the other narrowed so sharply that the differences between them were a matter of context rather than consequence.

The important one now is the one that splits his lectern off from the rest of the lecture hall. Students are allowed to cross it, of course, or else he would be neglecting his duty to them as their instructor. But they must inevitably leave, and his feet must remain planted squarely on his side of it.

It’s not even a line he drew himself, although he would have if need be. No—professors, at the beginning of their tenure, are warned. Students will construct feelings of intimacy with their teachers, interpreting their passion for academics as passion for the conduit thereof. Close relationships between mentor and mentee, to be sure, can be deeply beneficial for the young scholar’s development—

But they must remain impersonal. The work must be the lens through which student and teacher look at each other. That barrier must never be lifted.

So it doesn’t matter how old you are or aren’t, or that you’re a second-year grad student, or that every time you walk into the classroom Price wants to drag his desk chair over to yours because you’re the only one who seems like she gives a damn about what he teaches.

He may draw his lines, but he never crosses them.

He’s seen it before. Never done it himself. Phillip Graves has a reputation for it.

Of course, as the Americans like to say, innocent until proven guilty, but it’s hard to argue with the pretty girls Graves always seems to have floating around him every semester. Undergrads, even, though to his credit they seem usually to be the older ones.

Price doesn’t think that even Dean Shepherd’s lapdog could get away with fucking freshly legal coeds—mostly because, if Graves tried to pull something like that, Price might actually take matters into his own hands and kill the bastard himself.

As it is, he can’t actually prove that his colleague is sleeping with anyone he shouldn’t be. He’s not in the army anymore; he has no desire to lose sleep over staking out the man’s house.

The only consolation is that no one besides his students and the Dean seem to like Graves—something the man doesn’t seem concerned to rectify, if he even notices. Though Price can’t imagine that he hasn’t noticed. He’s always sitting alone at staff meetings if Shepherd isn’t present, and if he does try to talk to anyone, it’s usually the adjuncts, young women just beginning their careers in higher academia who know the drill by now and merely humor him.

So it shouldn’t surprise Price when, one day, he catches Graves chatting you up.

“Hey, congrats on the election, kid,” he hears him say to you, referencing your recent appointment as president to the student association of his department. Graves smiles, dimpling, all that American charm amped up to the maximum.

And Price sees red.

“Thank you, Professor Graves,” you say politely. You have your arms crossed over your binder, held to your chest, as if a makeshift shield.

“I’d have voted for you if I could’ve,” the other man says. “And hey, I know you Brits like your formalities, but it’s just Phil with me.”

“Erm…”

“There you are,” Price announces from the other end of the hallway.

You turn, and give look you shoot him is so relieved that, almost immediately, it clears the haze from his eyes, like a cool breeze moving through the hottest part of a summer day. Relief of his own floods him, washing the jealousy he’d barely had time to confront completely away.

“Hello, Professor,” you say, “I was just on my way to your office!”

“Good,” says Price, approaching. “Wanted to talk about your last paper. Had some issues with your secondary sources.”

You blanch, and he immediately feels guilty for the lie.

“Ah, go easy on the kid,” says Graves. “I keep telling you, John, no one likes a hardass.”

For some reason, there are two men in the department that Phillip Graves makes a consistent effort to interact with, and Price has the misfortune of being one of them. He’s not sure why—he thinks he’s made his distaste for the man very clear. It’s probably some dick-measuring contest for him; Price’s standing in the department, even despite Shepherd’s favoritism, is secure.

Whether it’s secure enough to withstand this…thing happening between you and him has yet to be seen.

“I hold my students to a higher standard, Graves,” Price says shortly. Then, to you, “Come along, and we’ll talk about it.”

He turns and leaves, and as he hears you hurry after him, an ugly kind of gratification begins purring behind his sternum. The two of you walk for a ways in silence.

“Was it the interviews?” you finally ask him, sounding genuinely upset. “I thought they would be okay, given that they were original transcriptions…”

“Your sources were fine,” Price soothes, unable to take it. “Just needed to give you a good out, didn’t I?”

You falter beside him, but quickly catch up. “Oh no, was I that obvious?”

He looks to you as he walks, catching the anxious expression on your face, and smiles, amused. “Don’t worry, promise you he couldn’t tell.”

Then you laugh. It enter’s Price’s bloodstream and pumps through his veins, all the way to the arteries in his neck. It fills the lobes of his brain, rapidly bringing the world into sharper focus.

“I’ll hold you to that, professor,” you say, and it’s a tether he welcomes, a sting of pleasure as its hook lodges in his ribs.

Price looks over his shoulder, and finds Graves watching the two of you walk away. He doesn’t like the expression on the other man’s face. It’s…knowing. Understanding, in the way of a man having competed for something and lost to the better opponent.

He catches the Graves’ eye, scowling at him; he means for the expression to be disapproving. For Graves to know that Price knows what he’s about, and has no intention of humoring it.

But he knows how it actually comes across.

Back off. She’s mine.

Price’s colleague and friend Alejandro Vargas is the only other man in the department that Graves cares to know, and, luckily for Price, Alejandro shares his dislike.

“He is too young to be acting the way he does,” he says one evening after work. He and Price share a pint at a pub nearby campus on a regular basis.

“Too young?” Price repeats. “What is he, thirty-five? Forty?”

“Who cares,” Alejandro says. “Anyone chasing after his students the way he does should at least be fifty. That way a midlife crisis can at least be a valid excuse.”

Price’s stomach turns. His forty-sixth birthday has already come and gone.

“So you’re sayin’—”

“Man his age can get his ego boost somewhere else,” Alejandro mutters into his tankard. He has a strange way of looking at things, sometimes; as if he were a much older man himself, and not in his prime at thirty-eight. “Don’t they make apps for that nowadays?”

“No excuse for messing with students,” Price agrees, although he tastes the bitter note of hypocrisy in the back of his throat as he thinks of you, and that rainy afternoon.

Driving you home was a mistake, although he can’t think of anything else he would’ve respected himself for doing. He clings to that excuse like a buoy in the ocean—no matter his feelings for you, leaving you on campus to wait until the storm passed, no umbrella, no coat, would have been unforgivable.

He’d played it off as simply doing a favor for his favorite student. A willingness to go beyond his usual responsibilities to you, since you excel beyond what even his high standards demand of you.

Something the two of you should keep between yourselves, for professionalism’s sake, because he has an obligation to treat every student equally.

I can be discreet, you’d said, the tone of your voice playful and also…not.

The way one says something that they mean, while framing it as a joke, just in case it’s taken the wrong way.

Mitigation.

Something he could’ve brushed off, if your hand hadn’t moved toward his.

Good girl. He’d moved his away. Focused on the line. Accepted your apology with grace, determined not to embarrass you for feelings that are only natural—

That are reciprocated, even though they shouldn’t be.

“That is less the problem to me,” Alejandro muses.

“What?” Price exclaims. “Mate, we have a responsibility to these kids. We can’t go treating classrooms like bloody Love Island.”

“It is about the man,” says his colleague. “If a man shows respect in his relationships, then it is not so important where they happen. Graves, he is not a respectful man.”

“No one his age should be with girls that much younger than him,” Price growls.

Alejandro fixes him with an intense look, a serious expression tightening the sharp lines of his face.

“This is what I mean by respect,” he says evenly. Purposefully. “Knowing who is right and wrong to be with. Girls that young? No. They do not know themselves, and Graves will try to tell them who they are. But not every girl is that young.”

Price shifts uncomfortably on his barstool, remembering one late afternoon—when Alejandro had stopped by his office, to find you sitting on the small couch there, studying, as Price finished grading essays.

Innocent, he’d thought. A mentor and his student, sharing space, making room for scholarship to flow between them.

He realizes now, chagrined, that Alejandro has always been too perceptive to accept what he merely observes.

“Mate,” Price says, measured, “It isn’t like that.”

“No,” Alejandro agrees, “it isn’t. That does not mean it can’t be.”

“Alejandro—”

“You are not your father, hermano,” his colleague says, knowing exactly where to strike. “That is the end of what I will say.”

And he sips his beer while leaving Price to seethe.

You’re seeing one of the twats.

Price convinced himself the first couple of times you walked out with him—Will—that you were taking on a charity case. You’re a student leader, after all. Helping a classmate with their ailing grades falls under your purview. You’ve hosted tutoring sessions before, and the pride of it had nestled glowing in his chest so warmly that he couldn’t help bragging about your academic promise to his colleagues.

Even outside of the ache for you that sits in his gut every time he sees you, Price could not be prouder. The students’ Historical Society’s fundraiser last month had gone off beautifully thanks to you, and everyone who had attended was still talking about it: from the brilliant idea for a fifties dress code, to the truly impressive array of antiques you’d convinced donors to contribute to the silent auction.

You’d looked so beautiful in your little red dress, too. The sharp lines of your burgundy lipstick had made your smile so bright all evening that he’d fallen asleep thinking about it.

His student. His protege, really. Of course you’d notice someone struggling, and make an effort to help.

Except, Price has never been very good at fooling himself. The truth is too valuable an asset for him to disregard.

The first time you leave with Will, he feels it clench around something in his gut. He has to remind himself he has no right to feel anything about it at all.

The second time, it starts burrowing deeper. Gnawing a hole in his stomach. The look on the twat’s face, as he follows you out like a lost puppy, is too smitten to allow Price his illusions.

Then one day, you take that twat’s hand in yours at the end of class, slotting your fingers between his.

It descends again. That film of red over his eyes. He stares at the two of you as you make your way to the door—and you throw Price a look, Price, aimed straight for his center.

You’re his. His.

And what has he done about it?

The accusation is in your eyes. It’s honed by everything he’s done—and hasn’t. The late-night chips after fundraiser planning. The cigars between classes, and the scotch in his office he pours every time you stop by to discuss your thesis.

The cufflinks he wears for every single class you’re in, and the box you wrapped them in sitting open on his beside table. Like a conduit for bringing the warmth of your touch into his home.

The same warmth, in his weakest moments, that he imagines wrapped around his cock. As his fingers find the soft give of your cleft. As his tongue meets yours, and tastes the liquor he now only drinks in your company.

Imagines, but never pursues.

Why had he believed you wouldn’t search for the same elsewhere?

The anniversary comes up faster than Price would have liked, despite the fact that the calendar isn’t missing any days.

He goes to the cemetery alone. Bouquet of English roses clutched in the vice of one hand. It feels like a day it should be raining, but the sky betrays him, the gray covering of clouds thin enough to let the dyed sunlight through.

He buried his mother in the plot she’d bought for herself and his father, Price the elder, according to her wishes. He’d buried his father beside her against Price the younger’s own.

It had happened within a year of each other. The chemotherapy hadn’t worked, after years of fighting it, and the last months of Mrs. Price’s life happened far sooner than it was fair. She hadn’t left any regrets behind, she promised in her will, but young John Price knew it for a lie.

He remembers sitting with her in the mornings as a boy, flipping through old issues of National Geographic. His mum would ooh and aah over exotic pictures of the American west—the Russian steppe—colorful bird’s eye shots of the Taj Mahal or Burj Khalifa.

“We’re gonna go there someday,”she would enthuse, squeezing him around his toddler-belly with one arm as he perched in her lap.

Even then he’d known it was a dream, and not a goal. All he had to do was look around at the yellow tint of their kitchen with its laminate countertops, the scuffs on the corners of its scratch-and-dent fridge, the mismatch of cookware hanging on a smoke-stained wall. Peeling wallpaper they didn’t have the right to tear off, because they needed their deposit back very badly when they moved out.

His father was a tradesman—they could barely afford to visit Wales.

And his mother, at the elder Price’s insistence, did not work.

It’s in a nice place, the grave. Far back away from the entrance, where it can’t be trivialized by passing cars or dog walkers. Price can stand at the end of it and reckon with death without having to think of life going inexorably on right behind him.

Except, it’s the years to the right of the dash that he stares at, not the left. Even as a boy, he’d always noticed the disparity between his mother and father. How, before the younger even turned fourteen, grey streaked Price the elder’s temples, scars of age furrowing deep from the corners of his nostrils— while the decades his mum still had left to face radiated from her so brightly that sometimes people took her for his father’s eldest, and not the baby she bounced on her hip.

Decades she never even got to see.

Price rounds to his mother’s side and lays the bouquet beneath her epitaph—Loving Wife and Mother. He’s almost as old now as she was, in her last year, and he feels the epicenter of it sit somewhere between his heart and lungs. It burns, furious, indignant.

“Got tenured this year, Mum,” he murmurs to her. “Probably pay off the house next.”

He hears birdsong in the tree line beyond the border fence. Tries to feel her fingers running through his hair in the breeze, and fails. It’s just wind.

His father—who he sees in the mirror too often lately—he does not address.

He makes the mistake all men eventually do—

He calls his ex.

“Hallo?” Ada says, after picking up on the second ring. She’s one of the few people he knows to keep a house phone these days. She’d explained she enjoys the novelty, and the surprise on the rare occasions it actually rings.

“Hi, darlin,’” says Price.

“John, hi! How you doin’?”

“I’m alright. How’s the new place?”

He hears a shift in the background, like she’s thrown herself at a haphazard angle into a chair. She’s always been like that; she moves through any space she occupies unafraid of what she might bump into.

“Tidy!” she enthuses. “Got a view of the sea down the hill. And there’s a market on Saturdays! I got the loveliest Gruyère from one of the stalls, says he ages it himself. Can’t wait to put it in a sauce.”

“Sounds nice,” Price says, meaning it.

“Yeah, it is,” Ada replies. He pictures her twirling the cord between her fingers. “Heard about your promotion, by the way, congratulations—you earned it, John.”

“Thank you,” he says. “Have you settled in okay there? Students giving you trouble?”

“Not at all! Bit touch and go at the start of the semester, but you know me,” she laughs. “That’s how I thrive.”

“I know.”

A pause. Long enough for Price’s regret over dialing her to make itself a part of the conversation.

She sounds good. She sounds better than good—she sounds great. Happy with where she is in life, and where she’s going.

Nothing like she did when she lived with him.

“So…” Ada trails. “I know you didn’t just call to chat, John. Not that I don’t appreciate it.”

“That obvious, am I?”

He can hear the sympathetic smile in her voice when she replies, “I can look at a calendar too.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I just—just wanted to hear your voice. Hope that’s alright.”

“Yeah, it’s alright,” she says. “Didn’t stop caring just because I left, you know.”

He hears the unsaid: just because you didn’t follow.

“I know,” he replies. He leaves the me neither unsaid as well. “Ada, do you—do you regret it, at all?”

“Regret…what?” The tone of her voice edges toward the defensive.

“Being with me.”

“What? John, of course not!” She laughs, tension evaporating. “We had some bad times, sure, but we had some good ones too. I’m grateful for all of them.”

“Even the bad times?” he asks, frowning.

“Yeah, John, even those. They showed me who you were. And I liked that person, a lot. If you had—”

She cuts herself off from the what if John knows had been coming. The speculation about what their relationship might have looked like, if he’d made a different decision. It would only hurt both of them more to think about it.

“If you’d been a worse man I’d have left a lot sooner,” she amends. “But like I said. No regrets. It’s over now, and I’m sad about that. But I’m glad it happened.”

Something happens behind Price’s ribs—something hard, trying to claw its way upward, that he has to draw his lips between his teeth and sniff hard to foil its escape.

“Thanks, darlin,’” he says, hearing the tremor in his own voice, and, for once, not hating himself for it with her listening. “I feel the same way too.”

He catches you with the twat in the library. It doesn’t surprise him—he hadn’t expected anything else. You hadn’t even looked at him this time as you’d pulled Will out of the lecture hall, nor had you noticed him following at a remove behind.

So when he opens the door to the sound of smacking flesh, it doesn’t shock him in the slightest.

You’re on a reading table with your skirt flipped upward, underwear dangling from one ankle as you curl your legs around the twat’s hips. The boy’s arse quivers and clenches as he jackhammers into you with neither art nor precision.

The look on your face is one of concentration. Focus. Like whatever pleasure you could derive from this is something you must actively keep hold of, otherwise you’ll lose it.

Your eyes land on him then, and for a split second—a fraction of a heartbeat—you seem relieved. Pleasure radiates from you, and you begin to roll your hips as you hold him in your gaze—and then, suddenly, horror overtakes it. Your eyes widen. You raise a hand to grab Will—

Price shakes his head.

You freeze. Your chest heaves. (The twat is oblivious.)

He stares you down. Leans against the bookshelf with his hands in his pockets, unblinking.

His.

His.

The thing about lines is that they can be redrawn.

You run your tongue along your parted lips, hands coming up to rest on the twat’s back. Price looks down at the place Will’s body hides yours from his gaze, then back up.

He inclines his head. Go on, then.

And again, you move. Right as his command. Pull the body between your legs closer, brows creasing together, undulating into each thrust as you let Price’s eyes cage yours. You draw up higher and higher, the pitch of your breath thinning as your climax stretches taut inside you—you beg him with your eyes—

He nods.

You seize on the desk, throwing your head back, jaw dropping open. No sound escapes you—he sees the muscles in your throat work to contain it.

What will you sound like when he gets his hands on you?

By the look on the twat’s face next class, you’ve ended it. Price hardly cares. His phone is hot in his pocket, a grenade with its pin nearly out.

In case your memory fails when you find yourself thinking of me.

And, in the center of the photo, the exact thing the twat’s hips had been hiding away.

You’re there, in the front row. Every time his gaze falls on you, you shiver. The same skirt from before leaves the soft expanses of your thighs bare, for him, this time.

His. You know it now, too. It intersects the line, perfect in its perpendicularity.

You have lessons to learn. You’re already a good student; the despondent expression on Will’s face, even now, as he gazes at you like a lovelorn puppy from the back of the hall, proves it.

But you’re not there yet. You’re only just now catching up, after all. And only Price has the duty—the right—to teach you.

You’re too young for him—

Not that it matters.

a/n: If this seems disjointed or missing context, it's because a few things I reference are no longer available on the internet. Ash, I mourn daily what you have withdrawn from us.

Thank you for reading!

[official-cvntified-gay]

MINISKIRT masterlist

pairing: professor!wanda x fem!reader

warning: ??

wc: 1.7k

note: Inspired by the cunty miniskirt of aoa, been a while since I posted so here it is.

I'm wearing a miniskirt.

But why are you the only one who doesn't notice?

You felt good. You looked good.

Your hands trailed over your curves, fingers mapping the way your clothes hugged your body just right. A smirk curled on your lips as you admired yourself in the mirror—high heels elongating your legs, the fabric of your miniskirt perfectly smooth under your freshly painted nails.

you weren’t dressing for anyone in particular. At least, that’s what you told yourself.

"Holy—"

You whipped around at the sudden voice behind you, your roommate standing in the doorway, eyes shamelessly dragging over your figure.

"Who are we trying to look good for?" she teased, biting her lip, her gaze never leaving you.

"No one," you replied quickly, though it came out a little too defensive.

She raised a brow, clearly not buying it. She stepped closer, adjusting the collar of your shirt, her nails grazing your skin deliberately, coaxing the truth out of you. "Bullshit," she said sweetly.

Rolling your eyes, you felt a familiar heat creep up your neck. "I’m not trying to impress anyone."

But she wasn’t listening. She flopped onto your bed with a smirk that made your stomach twist. "She won’t be able to take her eyes off you now."

You swallowed, pulse quickening. "Still the same?"

"Yes," you muttered, collapsing beside her with a groan. "It’s frustrating. She used to look at me like I was…" You trailed off, the words hard to say.

"Everything?" she finished for you, her voice low, as if knowing what you couldn’t bring yourself to say.

Yes.

Because she had looked at you that way.

Professor Wanda Maximoff always found your eyes during lectures, her gaze lingering longer than necessary. Her voice would drop an octave when she called your name, and her touch—always fleeting but deliberate—lingered when she handed back your papers, or when your hands brushed in the hallways.

You had been her favorite.

Everyone saw it. Everyone knew.

But recently?

It had all changed.

Her gaze turned cold. Her touches vanished. Her words became clinical, dismissive. As though you were just another student—nothing special.

You didn’t know what happened. You didn’t know what had caused her to shut you out. But one thing was certain: if she wasn’t going to look at you the way she once did, you would make her.

Class was the next morning, and you had carefully planned your outfit. You chose the clothes you were trying on last night, a tight miniskirt and a fitted blouse—one that accentuated your curves, one that would make her notice you. You didn’t care that you might seem bold or inappropriate. If Wanda wasn’t going to give you the attention you craved, you’d find a way to force it from her.

As you walked into class, you could already feel it—the tension.

You chose a seat in the front row, a place you rarely sat, and crossed your legs slowly, letting the hem of your skirt inch upward. Your fingers brushed the fabric absentmindedly, smoothing it out, almost as if you were teasing her. What you didn't caught is Wanda’s eyes flicker to you, and it unconsciously sent a thrill down your spine.

You could feel her gaze on you, heavy and assessing, but she said nothing, continuing with the lecture like everything was normal.

This wasn’t normal.

Her voice dipped lower, harsher, when she called on you. "Miss Y/L/N, since you seem so comfortable today, why don’t you answer the next question?"

You tilted your head, playing innocent, pretending you weren’t aware of what you were doing. "Which question, Professor?" you asked, your voice steady.

Wanda’s fingers tightened on the lectern, her knuckles white. You saw her jaw tense, and something flickered behind her eyes.

Thinking your planned worked. You leaned forward just slightly, the movement causing the fabric of your skirt to ride up a little more. Wanda’s gaze flickered again—this time it lingered longer, and you could see her struggling to maintain control.

Her voice trembled, betraying her resolve. "What is the defining characteristic of a..." She trailed off, as if the words were becoming harder to say, harder to focus on.

You felt it, that familiar energy pulsing between the two of you. She was fighting it. But you weren’t going to let her win.

You shifted again in your seat, slowly, letting your body draw her eyes like a magnet. You traced your fingers over the hem of your skirt, just enough for her to see, but not enough to give you away.

"Professor?" you asked, your voice low, almost teasing.

She snapped her gaze back to the board, her breathing shallow. The class seemed to stretch on forever, but in that moment, all you could hear was your own heartbeat—and Wanda’s quickened pulse beneath the surface.

When class ended, you didn’t wait. You stood immediately, gathering your things quickly, knowing she wouldn’t let you go without addressing what had happened.

You walked up to the front of the room, the slight click of your heels on the tile floor echoing through the otherwise empty lecture hall.

Wanda’s eyes followed you the whole way, and you saw the tightness in her jaw, the tension in her shoulders. She was trying so hard not to give in.

But you weren’t going to make it easy for her.

You stopped in front of her desk, standing just a little too close, waiting for her to meet your eyes.

For a moment, she didn’t say anything. Just stared at you, her breath ragged, her gaze dark.

And then, slowly, she exhaled. "Miss Y/L/N," she said, her voice dangerously low. "Do you think you’re clever?"

You leaned forward slightly, matching her tone, matching her challenge. "I think you want me," you said, each word deliberate.

Wanda didn’t move, didn’t respond immediately. But you saw the way her chest rose and fell, saw the way her fingers curled against the desk.

Her eyes never left you as she spoke again, her voice like velvet. "You’re playing a dangerous game."

You swallowed, a rush of heat flooding your body. Maybe you were.

But you knew one thing for sure—if she wasn’t going to make a move, then you would.

And this game? It was only just beginning.

You leaned in just a fraction closer, your breath mingling with hers. "Are you going to punish me, Professor?" you whispered, a teasing smile tugging at your lips.

For a split second, Wanda’s face was unreadable—her expression wavering between something dangerous and something far more personal.

"You’re asking for trouble," she said, her voice barely a whisper. She stood up, moving just a step closer, her presence almost suffocating now.

Your pulse raced as the space between you two became thinner, the tension unbearable. There was no going back now.

"You want this," you said, your voice breathless.

Wanda’s eyes darkened, her lips parting as if to say something—anything—but nothing came out. Instead, she took another step, her hand reaching up to trace the outline of your jaw.

Her touch was light, but it sent a jolt of heat straight through you. You tilted your head slightly, your lips just inches from hers.

For a moment, neither of you moved, caught in the forbidden tension that had been building for weeks.

And then, Wanda's voice, barely above a whisper, broke the silence: "Next time… don’t come so close."

You smiled, knowing full well that there would be a next time.

And next time, your miniskirt would lay in a crumpled heap on her bedroom floor.

[damneddamsy]

falling | joel miller x fem!oc (part xii)

THEOREM OF BECOMING—Transformation is not a moment, but a process.

summary: The journey back to Jackson is full of make-believe of a life that almost feels like it's coming true.

a/n: woohoo, happy AAPI month! I'm sorry this update took so long, I was so indecisive on how I wanted this chapter to end, and what I wanted to depict, especially at the end when it was hard for me to decide where I wanted to place all of them... I just hope it turned out okay! one more chapter left before the epilogue :)

word count: 12,800+ words (dare I say, a short one?)

Joel tried to imagine himself at university. Outlandish things like, what would’ve happened if the world had given him a second door to open?

Because being here—goddamn. It was hard not to wonder what it might’ve felt like, walking into a place like this with a backpack and purpose instead of a rifle and regret.

What kind of kid would Joel have been, sitting in one of those chairs? Twenty years old, maybe. Hell—eighteen if he'd played it straight. No Sarah. No mortgage. No busted-up drywall jobs. No worry about gas bills or whether the AC would hold another summer.

Fuck no, he wouldn't do whatever it was Leela was doing in that lab, with data and diagrams that looked like chicken scratch to him. He would want a degree in something that lets the brain wander. A major in liberal arts, maybe. History. Music theory sounded nice. All that “not real work” crapola folks in his neighbourhood used to scoff at.

He’d always had a good head on him—just never the time or the cash to spend chasing someone else’s definition of smart. See, college wasn’t for men like him. Places like this weren’t made for people like him.

It was a gate you needed a key for, and that key used to cost fuck-ton loans and inevitable debt. More than he ever had or would have.

But that never meant he wasn’t curious. Never meant he didn’t know things.

Truth was, Joel used to like ideas. He liked stories. He read when he could. Listened. Paid attention. Watched old movies with Sarah, sometimes caught the way dialogue turned into meaning. Took in books secondhand, borrowed from neighbours, dog-eared and scribbled in. Kept his head and hands busy. When he worked construction, he could out-measure, out-calculate, and out-plan any of those stiff-collared pricks with their clean hands and degrees nailed to their office walls.

Tommy used to joke that Joel could memorize a script better than a foreman could read a blueprint.

“Man, you ain’t dumb,” his baby brother said once, picking dried cement off his hands. “We’re just poor.”

And he'd agreed. Their whole academic system was a racket, just a way of putting a price tag on knowledge.

Places like Caltech were always for them—it was for the bright ones, the born-lucky, the rich kids with trust funds and internships lined up like bowling pins. Kids like Leela, in fact. He'd never set foot in a real university, let alone one like this. All that prestige and legacy. Hell, even the labs looked like spaceships.

Joel had never even been on a real campus before the world went belly-up, and now here he was, boots echoing in a dead lecture hall, listening to Leela piece together the last remnants of science like she was born for it.

He stood halfway down the sloped aisle, one hand dragging along the edge of a long desk. The laminate was peeling at the corners. He could picture a thousand students slouched here over the decades, bent over laptops or spiral notebooks, yawning, scrawling notes they’d forget the second finals ended.

Behind him, Ellie climbed onto the stage at the bottom of the hall, testing the strength of the lectern like a kid playing teacher. Her voice carried, all grin and gravel.

“Bet you’d sit in the back row. Right, Joel?”

Joel smirked. “Only place I could get away with nappin’.”

“Or so you think. I’d definitely be front row. Raising my hand. Asking annoying questions.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Ain’t nothin’ changed.”

“Pft, whatever.”

Beyond the doors, down the corridor, he could just make out the faint click-clack of keys—Leela, working in the lab with that same eerie calm she always had when the world dropped away and it was just her and the numbers. Her silhouette had barely shifted in an hour. Her hair was loose, falling over one shoulder, half in the light. She looked like she belonged in there.

“Y’know,” he drawled out to Ellie from somewhere inside his head, “I think she and I… if we’d met like that back then… we’d’ve found each other.”

Ellie didn't tease him about it. “Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah. I’d be the guy just tryin’ to keep up. Probably complainin’ about the campus coffee and the goddamn parking passes.”

She grinned. “She’d dodge you for two whole weeks.”

“Hm. Sounds ‘bout right.”

“Then one day you’d say something too smart that’d make her stop and think. And boom. Now you’re study partners.”

He sighed. “I ain’t smart, kiddo.”

“Nah, you’re smart.”

“Not that kinda smart.”

“Bullshit. You literally remember everything. Details. Faces. The way you describe a guy’s boots, I feel like I was there.”

Joel clucked his tongue. “You learn to read people when your life depends on it.”

She shrugged. “Still counts.”

He didn’t answer, but his mouth twitched—somewhere between a smile and a grimace. “Hey, know what else? She’d’ve helped me cheat on a math exam.”

“Ha, no way. Leela would smack you across the face.”

He rubbed his jaw, the beginnings of a smile ghosting across his mouth. “But she’d tutor me. Make me memorise some dumb equation by makin’ it a song or somethin’. She hums that stuff sometimes, y'know? 'Spretty cute.”

Ellie gave him a look—half fond, half exasperated. “Jesus. Jesse was right. You're cuntstruck.”

“Ellie,” he muttered, more warning than scolding, but it didn’t carry much heat.

“Aw, c’mon, Joel. Can you just imagine a life where,” she sighed, “you just live that time-honoured, grey area of life? Be a normal dude with a college sweetheart or some shit?”

“How the hell do you know all that?”

“I'm just that baller.”

“Jesus.”

Now, Joel meant to leave it there, but the thought had already taken root.

He let his eyes drift toward the broken chalkboard at the front of the room, and the lecture hall around them seemed to grow in his mind—less ruin, more memory of something he never had.

He imagined Leela sitting at a desk beside him, in a school that let smart kids like her and dumbasses like him sit together—just one of those big halls with sticky floors and ceiling fans that clicked when they turned, where the smart ones always found the front row and the tired ones sat wherever the sun didn’t hit their eyes. She’d be chewing a pen cap, probably, maybe twirling a strand of hair around her finger, nodding all serious while some professor went off about Gödel or Fermat or one of those names that felt more like hexes than people. Joel wouldn’t understand a lick of it—not even on his best, most caffeinated day.

But maybe—she’d lean in, whisper it in Layman's for him. Not to make him feel dumb, but because she wanted him to know. All sweet, patient, gracious Leela.

He’d pretend to follow along, nodding at the right times, but mostly he’d be watching the way her mouth moved around the words, the way her brows bunched up when she really got into it. Watching the gears turn in her beautiful, brilliant head. Joel still did that, when she went off on a tangent in their living room between her blackboards, he'd just want her to kiss her until she was blue in the face.

He nevertheless would've fallen so damn hard for her. Right on his ass. No question about it.

Wouldn’t have taken him long to ask her out, either—not if they’d met like that. Not if she didn’t already know all the things the world had done to a man like him. He would have acted like his balls had just dropped or something—nervous as hell, but trying to play it cool. Sweaty palms, rehearsed lines in front of his mirror. Something about those big, dark eyes of hers, her fancy shoes, or her mint-condition books. Something along the lines of: I promise I’m more interesting than I look… though I realise the bar’s low since I’ve been standing here staring at you for the last thirty seconds.

And if she’d fold and giggle ‘okay’—and he liked to believe she would—he’d take her out someplace decent. Someplace with candlelight, silverware, suited waiters, cloches and folded napkins. He’d pick her up in front of her building. Show up with a fat bouquet of daisies. Pull her chair out for her at dinner. Hold the door. Call her ma’am without even thinking. He would be flat-broke in that life too, but he was raised right with Texan manners imbued upon him by Mr and Mrs Miller, after all.

Leela would probably tease him a little, maybe make fun of how stiff his shirt collar was or how he kept checking the long-ass bill like it was going to change. But she’d smile through it and offer to go Dutch instead. That rare, toothy smile of hers that made her look so young, unguarded and just a little bit shy.

He imagined them walking back across campus after—quiet, inseparable, arm around his. Maybe it was autumn. Maybe the crimson maple leaves crunched under their feet, and she kept pushing her hands into the sleeves of her coat like she always did when she was cold but didn’t want to say so. Maybe he’d offer his jacket. Maybe she’d take it. Maybe he’d blow into her hands in an attempt to kiss them.

Maybe that night, standing outside her place, she’d look up at him with that same quiet challenge in her eyes she had now—like she was daring him to be gentle.

And he would’ve been. Gentle as fuck. Their first kiss wouldn’t have been some clumsy, rushed thing. No desperation. No fear of the dark coming back. Just... time. Time you don’t know you’re wasting until it’s gone.

He imagined her fingers curled into his coat on maybe their fourth date, maybe he'd just taken her out ice-skating or bowling, and she would push the coat off him, and pull him a little closer. Stay with me tonight. A breath caught between their lips. And maybe—God help him—maybe they’d have stumbled into the fancy elevator of her expensive off-campus apartment, shoes kicked off halfway, giggling when she nearly tripped over her own purse left by the door. He’d catch her waist, steady her, and she’d glance at him with those mischievous eyes that already knew what he wanted. I want all of you.

They’d lock the door behind them, not because they had to, but because they could—because no one was chasing them, nothing was breathing down their necks. Just a night in. Quiet. Private. Theirs.

The desk lamp would still be on, casting light over her math books still open, forgotten now, pages fluttering. Her room would be warm, a little cluttered, with too many books for one person. A corkboard with pinned movie stubs and Post-it reminders. A polaroid of them, maybe, from some campus event—Joel squinting at the lens, Leela mid-laugh as always, her nose scrunched in that way he loved.

They’d peel off layers slowly. Clothes in a trail from the doorway to the bed. His shirt, her dress, his belt, her tights, his boxers. Her bra hanging from the lamp. They’d laugh a little, giggling some, fumbling with the condom in his wallet like it was a joke they’d made earlier in the week—about how just in case that had suddenly become now.

No pressure. No pain. First times. A night they got to have too late. No urgency, no hunger born from grief or fear. Just intimacy. Just plain, affectionate, stumbling, careful sex. Earned. Trusted. Wanted.

He pictured them afterwards, her curled against him beneath tangled sheets, tracing lazy shapes on his chest while the radiator clanked in protest against the cold. Nodding while they discussed their upcoming test, how she’d incentivise him with a kiss for each question he scored, fingers moving through her hair, catching on a tiny braid she must’ve done while studying.

The window would fog up by morning. They’d sleep through their alarms. Maybe skip class like dumb rebels. Maybe make breakfast instead—pancakes from a box, the batter too thick, the frying pan too hot. He’d burn the first one and she’d steal it anyway, kissing him with syrup on her lips. Good fuckin' morning to me.

They’d graduate together, in this life. He’d be in the back row on ceremony day, shoes shined for once, hair swept back neatly, watching his best girl stride across the stage to grab her scroll. Top of her class, honour roll, summa cum laude. Maybe he didn’t get a diploma of his own—maybe he took night classes, taking the slow route out—but he’d be there, standing up before anyone else, clapping like hell, hooting her name with his hands cupped around his lips.

And she’d find him later, tassel on her crooked hat flying, gown wrinkled, eyes shining, leaping into his arms, and he’d spin her about. Kiss her right there in the crowd like he was the luckiest son of a bitch alive.

And in that life—the life he never got—maybe they’d go on like that for years. Their families are all tight-knit, spending holidays together, all of them waiting on hand and foot for Joel to pop the question, but he promised his girl all the time in the world. No muss, no fuss.

Graduation photos in front of some ivy-covered wall. Travel photos of the two of them from roadtrips and weekend escapes—mountains in Telluride, coasts in Monterey, lighthouses in Nantucket. Maybe later they’d rent a shitty apartment together in a big city even if he hated it—New York, or London, or some big German town with a zigzag skyline and a bakery on every corner—while she chased her PhD dreams and he’d just be happy to take care of them. Joel would take on carpentry jobs to keep the lights on and fix things around the building in exchange for rent. He'd play gigs, strum his old guitar, in pubs and bars all night for a good sum of cash. Patch the leaky sink with elbow grease. Assembling furniture that they couldn’t afford to buy. Shelves full of her notes. Coffee rings on the floor. Late-night supermarket runs. Eat dinner for breakfast and fall asleep with her textbooks open between them. The laughter of a life being made from scratch.

And maybe one day, not in a church, not even in a courthouse—but under that oak tree just outside her big, white house in Jackson, they’d say their vows. Soft ones. Barely louder than the wind. Just a handful of people who mattered, a patch of wildflowers in springtime, and the gold ring he’d carried in his pocket for years. Her hand in his, sliding the band into place. Her thumb brushing his knuckles while he tried not to cry. I offer you all I have, my dumbass and beating heart.

And she’d laugh when he picked her up, white dress, veil and all, just to prove he still could, and carry her over the threshold, whilst her sandals dangled from his fingers. They'd make love like it was the first time, on a nice, month-long honeymoon in the Maldives or Bali, on a linen, canopy-frame bed that wobbled by the time they were through.

And one day, he’d come home—sawdust still in his hair, tired to the bone, aching for his long shower—only to find a positive test on the bathroom sink, and they’d smile at each other like they’d just won the lottery. Those soft, teary eyes they’d share. You think we've got room for one more around here?

And from that moment on, Joel would've been all in. No half-measures. No second-guessing. Just him, right in her pocket. He wouldn’t leave her side unless he had to—work, maybe, or some emergency—and even then, she’d be on speed dial (not that she already wasn’t). He’d check in constantly. Make sure she was drinking water, eating enough. Sitting her antsy ass down.

Late at night, he’d press his ear to her belly, grinning when their baby kicked like she already had her mama’s fire. He’d murmur promises against her skin—about giving her the world, about love, about never missing a thing again. And he’d mean every damn word.

He wouldn’t miss a single ultrasound, even if the clinic was across town and the truck was coughing smoke. He’d be there for all of it—Lamaze classes, nausea, mood swings, sleepless nights, midnight drives for god-knows-what. He’d baby-proof every damn inch of the house, stock the cabinets with baby items, triple-check the crib screws, read every parenting book he could find, even the ones with goofy cartoon covers.

Overbearing? For fucking sure. She might threaten to divorce him half a dozen times before the third trimester—but he’d take it, all of it. With a grin and a kiss and a Yes, ma’am.

And when it was time—when the world narrowed to a hospital room and the sound of her hurting wails—he’d be right there, surgical gown and all, holding her hand through every contraction, brushing damp hair from her face, whispering through the panic, through his heart tearing in two: I’m right here, baby. I ain’t going anywhere.

And Maya would come hollering into their lives. Of course, that’s what they’d name her in this life, too. Radiant, beautiful, nascent Maya, looking just like her mama and holding his heart in her tiny fist. All that imagining he’d ever done—every if, every maybe—had somehow led to this little girl he called his.

He pictured Maya clearly in that other life—the one that never got to be. Toddling around their grad-school apartment, leaping onto his stomach in PJs on a lazy Sunday morning, giggling through a mouthful of sugary cereal while Leela chased after their little thief, trying to snatch the box from her sticky hands. One sock is on, and the other is always missing. Her wild curls bouncing as she ran to him when he walked through the door—always early, maybe this time in a stable job which involved him wearing a suit and tie, lugging a briefcase—arms outstretched, shrieking Da-da! like he was some kind of superhero, and without fail, he'd rain at least a hundred kisses on her before letting her go.

She’d throw a fit in the toy aisle over exactly the faulty stuffed animal, with lopsided eyes and a ripped tag, and Joel would fold like wet paper the second she pouted.

And if the bad times did come, the only arguments he and Leela might’ve had were the soft kind, inconsequential—disagreements over something like Joel’s brief, doomed venture into stocks, or Leela being scatterbrained with the grocery runs, or whether Maya should go to that elite preschool an hour away with the long waitlist and sterling reputation. Joel would’ve wanted the best for her, the kind of start he never had. But Leela would just want to keep Maya close a little longer, probably even attempt to homeschool her if she could swing it.

They’d make up over pizza on the couch—Maya asleep between them, still clutching that faulty toy, cartoons flickering on the TV. Their fingers would find each other over the back of her blanket, apology and forgiveness exchanged without a single word spoken.

And thereafter, the mornings were ones where he'd juggle coffee cups, lunch bags and backpacks, dropping Leela off at her university, her hair still wet from a rushed shower, pencil skirt on a tight ass that waited for it's morning squeeze, a thick binder clutched to her chest, a soft lingering kisses shared over the console; and then Maya in the backseat, singing along to the radio, squealing when he pulled up to her school next. She’d barely get her backpack on before she tore across the pavement to her friends, flashing Joel a quick flying kiss and a grin that damn near knocked the wind out of him every time.

And at night—the three of them crammed around a too-small kitchen table, Leela would sit, drafting her research papers or scribbling in a notebook, Maya in her lap, doodling in the margins, asking about black holes and dinosaurs in the same breath. Leela would answer every question like it was the most important one she’d ever been asked. Joel would just listen, smiling into his beer, tuck the moment away somewhere safe inside him, like a man who knew exactly how fragile good things could be.

And Maya would believe everything her mama told her. Because why wouldn’t she?

Joel blinked, staring at the cracked chalkboard. The room was silent, save for Ellie’s soft humming and the hum of distant power from the lab down the hall.

But that life—that life—wasn’t the one they got.

But maybe... maybe it wasn’t too late for some piece of it. Not the degrees or the papers.

But the love part. The quiet part.

Maybe that kind of life still had a place in this one. Maybe that was still real. Maybe it was standing just down the hall, surrounded by equations, stubborn as ever.

He smiled to himself, soft and stupid, like a man who’d just lived a whole other life in three minutes.

A loud metallic clatter broke the spell.

Joel turned—slow, blinking like he'd just woken from a dream—and found Ellie grinning at him, holding up a dusty diploma frame like she’d just pulled a sword from a stone. The glass was cracked in one corner, the name beneath faded and half-eaten by sun and decay. But scrawled across the middle in thick, unapologetic black marker was something brand new:

Dr. Leela Miller.

“Well,” Ellie said, lifting it higher like a trophy, “I didn’t know her last name, so…”

Joel stared. His breath caught on something warm.

“Reed,” he said, slow and quiet, like the name had weight. Affection weaved through it like a thread. “But this… this is fine.”

He could almost see it—this on the wall of that little apartment they never had. Over a desk cluttered with paper and empty mugs and one tiny sock, someone still hadn’t found the match for.

Ellie held it out to him like a kid offering a crayon drawing. “It’s probably not, y’know, technically accredited,” she said with a crooked smile. “D'you think she'll feel a little better?”

He snorted, folding his arms. “That's a ten-dollar word from a dollar-sized person.”

“Hey, fuck you.”

He gave her a look, soft and knowing. “Well, Leela won’t say it right now, but yeah. She will.”

Then he glanced across the hall.

There she was—his smartass, hunched on a table littered with papers and old, curling printouts. Leela had one hand braced against the edge, the other pressed over her mouth like she couldn't believe what she was seeing. Her fingers moved through a page, tracing lines of ink like a woman touching scripture. Like she was holding a piece of a language she'd thought was long dead.

Joel brought two fingers to his lips and let out a sharp, low whistle.

Across the hall, Leela jolted a little—more like a reflex than real surprise—blinking over at him with a stunned, empty look. It cracked after a second, softening into something small and sheepish, but Joel didn’t miss the way she moved, like she was dragging herself up from somewhere far away.

He tipped his head toward her, half a smirk pulling at his mouth, trying to keep it easy, light.

“Weather’s turnin’,” he called, voice carrying across the dusty floorboards. “We oughta get movin’ along before it gets any worse.”

“Um...”

Leela hesitated, staring back at the whirring, flickering monitor like it was something alive she’d been charged with keeping breathing. Her hand lifted slowly, clumsily, brushing her hair out of her face with the back of her wrist.

She gave a stiff little nod—obedient, automatic, like she wasn’t even aware of doing it.

Joel opened his mouth—half-ready to tell her it was fine if she needed more time—but Ellie piped up behind him.

“Ooh, we gotta head down to the coast first. Ay, you promised the beach, old man!”

Joel felt the beginnings of a headache forming behind his eyes. He turned slightly, cutting a look back at Leela for silent backup.

And Leela just shrugged. Just the barest hitch of her shoulders, like even the decision didn’t mean much anymore. Her mouth twitched at the corners, a hint of old amusement surfacing and dying again all at once.

“I've almost finished the upload,” she said, tapping the corner of the monitor, where some ancient progress bar crawled along painfully slow. “Just... eleven more minutes.”

Eleven minutes.

It used to drive Joel a little crazy, if he was honest. He’d thought it was grief or obsession. Maybe denial. He’d even thought as much, once—there wasn’t anyone left who cared about prime numbers and proof sheets. Leela's long nights hunched over scavenged paper, her fingers smudged with graphite and ash, scribbling until her wrist cramped. A fucking waste indeed.

No one needed the big hypothesis solved when there were clickers on the road and medicine running thin.

And now he saw it.

She wasn’t trying to bring the old world back. She was trying to make sure some vestige of it survived.

Not the comforts. Not its power grids or grocery stores, or monuments. But it's thinking. It's questions. The bones of the mind that had once built bridges and satellites and figured out how to split atoms. She was keeping that, preserving hope for the world that would eventually look back.

And she was sending it forward like a time capsule in the shape of code—across a patchy uplink, through battered infrastructure, to a settlement that might not even know what to do with it.

One day, someone would.

Someone with a mind like hers. Someone with less blood on their hands and more time. A student, a child, a generation down the line who’d never seen the world fall and might still wonder how it once stood.

She was sending it all to Jackson—not as salvation, maybe, but as seed.

Something to plant. Something to grow if they ever got a spring again.

And if that someone asked, if they searched—she’d be there. In the pages, in the math. In the margins, scrawled with her restless handwriting. A woman who had no lab, no colleagues, no safety, but still sat down and thought.

Joel rubbed his thumb over a dent in the metal of the desk. It was humbling, what she was doing. Quiet and unadorned, the way most real things were.

And for the first time, he didn’t feel far from her work. He didn’t feel like it belonged to a world he couldn’t touch. He was somehow a part of it, too.

He exhaled through his nose, scratching the back of his neck. Eleven minutes. Seemed like a small enough thing after everything they'd been through.

He shifted his weight, the old floor creaking under his boots, and his gaze caught on the diploma again—still cradled in Ellie’s hands, the cracked glass catching the faint grey light.

Dr. Leela Miller.

Miller.

His name. His... wife.

He hadn't expected it to hit him like that. The word sitting there plain and heavy, stitched onto her like it had always belonged. The beginning of his other life.

His name stitched there so plainly, so firmly, like it had always been meant to sit against her like that. A jolt went through him—sharp and unexpected—settling low in his gut like a stone thrown into deep water.

He could almost see it, just for a second—clearer than any dream he ever allowed himself to linger on: Leela standing beside him at some clean, sun-warmed courthouse, signing her new name across the marriage license with a little grimace, muttering about how bureaucratic nonsense would outlive them all. Joel, laughing under his breath, taking the pen after her, signing his name next to hers. The flash of a cheap camera. The clap of a judge’s hand on his back. Her grinning face turned up to his, awaiting a congratulatory kiss. And he would make it linger, pressing two, three, four kisses before he murmured against her lips: You alright there, Mrs Miller?

Yes, Joel didn’t feel the press of the world closing in.

He just stood there, hands planted firm on his hips, heart too big for his ribs, and thought, Maybe it ain’t the life I thought I'd have.

When he was young—back before the world cracked open—he thought he understood what a good life was supposed to look like. Steady work. A home. A little backyard for Sarah to tear around in. A dog, one of those loud mutts that drove the neighbours crazy. Bills paid on time. Supper on the table by six. Simple. Straightforward. A line you followed if you kept your head down and your hands busy.

He’d built toward that life once. Brick by brick. Sweat and sacrifice and stubbornness. And he’d watched it all turn to ash in a single night, leaving nothing but the brutal math of survival behind.

Wake up. Choke down rations. Shoot. Kill without a thought. Stay alive. Sleep with one eye open. Repeat.

Hope had been a dangerous thing after that, an unaffordable luxury. Like college.

But standing here now, and Leela hunkered over that blinking screen like she was fighting the universe itself to save what little good was left in it—Joel realised he’d been wrong about what makes a life and what was worth holding onto.

It wasn’t about clean houses or paid-off trucks or picture-perfect little towns.

It was about this.

It was about watching the woman he loved refuse to give up on the world, even when the world had given up on her. It was about Ellie clutching a battered diploma like it was the goddamn Declaration of Independence, blinking out the window like a daydreaming college kid who still believed she’d make it here. It was about Maya somewhere back home, waiting, safe, growing up in a place that hadn’t been paved over by fear.

It was about them.

So, why not... breathe life into that other reality?

Joel shifted slightly, his hand drifting to his pocket—more out of habit than thought. His fingers closed around the small thing he’d stashed there weeks ago, careful not to draw attention to it.

Rolled it between his fingers sometimes, in replacement for the brass button that Maya had bestowed on him—in quiet moments, when no one was looking. Like maybe if he kept turning it long enough, the edges would smooth out, the crack in the band would seal, and time would forget whatever broke it.

It wasn’t much to look at. Just a beat-up old ring he’d pocketed back in Vegas, half-buried in dust beneath a shattered display case. The stone was gone. The band was thin and cracked, barely holding together. Still, he’d kept it. Couldn’t say why at first. Just felt right in his hand—small, broken, stubborn. Reminded him of someone.

Lately, he’d been thinking about what he might do with it. How he could fix it, in his own way. Maybe shave a sliver of intricate wood into the place where the diamond used to be. Not anything fancy, maybe a flower. She liked sunflowers. Just something honest. Pine, maybe—she always smelled like pine sometimes. Or walnut, strong and durable, like him. Something alive, something that wouldn’t shine too bright, but would still catch the amalgam of Leela.

He didn’t know if he’d ever give it to her. Or when. Or if she’d even want it.

Hell, he didn’t even know what he’d say.

But he carried it with hope anyway.

That was the strange part. It wasn’t really the ring that mattered—it was the idea. That someday, there might be room for something like that between them. Not as some big gesture. Not to fix anything. Just to say: this is still yours if you want it. Just to prove he still believed in what could come next.

Maybe sometimes love looked like a broken ring in a calloused hand, waiting for a world soft enough to give it back.

The sharp things—the grief, the anger, the failure—they were still there, rooted deep under his skin like old thorns. They always would be. But for once, Joel could see something else threading through it. A quieter kind of ache. Not the pain of losing, but the ache of wanting.

He wanted the kind of life that didn’t just survive the world’s ending—but stubbornly, stupidly, beautifully outlived it.

He wanted her, and Ellie, and Maya, and every goddamn scraped-together piece of a future he never thought he'd deserve.

And in this dead place, in the flicker of failing light and old dreams burned onto curling paper, Joel believed—just a little—that maybe this had all been for something. After all, maybe they hadn't come all this way just to bury what was lost. Perhaps they were here to carry it forward.

Maybe they were the ones meant to build what came next.

His throat felt tight, but he welcomed it. A man could learn to carry that feeling. He should carry it. Get used to it. All these good things he was doing.

He slipped the ring back into his pocket, careful, like it might bruise. Gave the pocket a small, reassuring pat.

He glanced at Leela, at the way she leaned into the light like a plant aching for the sun, and felt that wild, wordless thing rise again inside him.

Ours, he thought. Not just hers. Not just his.

Ours.

X

The ocean resembled a busted mirror.

Not glittering or big or blue. Just slabs of grey and darker grey, churning slow under the breadth of a sky that didn’t give a damn. The wind came off the water in lazy fits, carrying salt and rot and the memory of heat that had long since packed up and gone.

Wind tugged at what was left of the boardwalk nearby, a few slats still clinging on like they didn’t know how to fall properly. Rusted carnival lights hung in strips. Booths were gutted. A souvenir shack had collapsed into itself, hurling faded postcards and cracked plastic mugs across the ground. He saw a cracked one half-buried in the dune: I Survived Santa Monica Pier. Bit fucking ironic.

The sea had taken it all back. The joy. The noise. The crowds. It felt biblical, in a way. Like the tide was the big guy's long exhale.

Joel stood at the edge of it all—boots half-buried in wet sand, stepping over a tangled snarl of sea-bleached fishing net fibres, arms crossed against the cold that kept slipping under his jacket. The pier beyond was a half-collapsed skeleton, stripped bare, its spine curling out into the surf with broken ribs of wood jutting upward. Boats still rocked gently in the distance—untouched, paint peeling, sails long since devoured by saline winds, hulls soft with barnacles and time. No lights. No squalling. Not even of birds.

Funny. He used to think that if they ever made it to the coast, something would change. That maybe it’d feel like the end of the road—or the start of something. No, this was just another place the world forgot.

Ellie was already out near the waterline, her boots discarded in a heap beside a tide pool. She’d rolled up her jeans and waded ankle-deep into the cold muck, laughing as she scratched her name into the sand with a busted piece of driftwood. She looked so small like that. Innocent. Her shoulders loose, grin so secretive. He didn't get to see that often.

He watched her kneel, tongue poking slightly out in concentration, and for a moment—just a flicker—it wasn’t Ellie crouched in the sand.

It was Sarah.

Not imagined, not hoped. Saw. Not older, not younger—just as she was the day he lost her.

Kneeling beside her, seaweed looped over her wrist like bracelets, giggling about how it was going to get washed away but doing it anyway. He could see her—clearer than anything. Her head of sunlit curls, tossed by the wind. Making a heart out of the seaweed. Lining the letters with broken shells. Elbowing Ellie with that half-teasing grin she used to have, the one that always said, Do not mess this up for me, Dad.

He clenched his jaw. Swallowed hard. Blinked until the double image snapped apart again, rattled the thought loose from his head, and it was just Ellie again, whistling tunelessly, digging up dead coral to decorate her crude scrawl in the sand.

Goddamn, was this what it was going to be now?

Visions. Ghosts. Fantasies of another life. Wishing, wanting. His mind folding over itself. Losing the thread.

Or was it just the many extremities of grief? The accumulation of too many years? Or was this the beginning of something slower and crueller? Alzheimer’s or some shit. Some fucking cordyceps variation they didn’t have a name for yet. Maybe he’d start forgetting the way back to Jackson. Maybe he already had.

He rubbed a hand across his face, dragging grit from his cheek. The salt clung to his stubble, and the ocean made his eyes sting even when the wind didn’t hit them.

A little ways off, Leela sat cross-legged on the sand, her back to the surf, little haphazard strands from her long braid slapping at her cheeks. A neat little pile of small seashells sat beside her, most of them dull with age and wear—but one, a tiny conch, recently vacated by some poor creature that hadn’t made it. It was still freshly pink inside, gleaming, faintly iridescent.

She had a needle gripped between her fingers, her brow furrowed as she carefully worked it through the shell’s spire. Every movement was methodical, like she wasn’t thinking about what she was doing, like it was all buried muscle memory. When she threaded the bit of twine through and tied a knot, she held the shell up between two fingers, inspecting, squinting at it like it was some precious thing instead of beach trash.

“For Maya,” she said quietly, flashing him a smile—small, lopsided, but real.

Joel let out a soft grunt of recognition. Awful lot of jewellery to be taking back to Jackson.

“Cute.”

He remembered that story—the one he hadn’t meant to overhear, but things stuck. Something about her old life, before Jackson, before her parents, before a child of her own. How she used to make little shell necklaces just like that one and sell them to dumb tourists along the coast back in her hometown. Overpriced junk, she’d said. That weird, lonely kind of pride people have when they remember who they used to be.

Maybe this was her way of passing it on. A sliver of childhood she could carve off and give to Maya. A small thing that said I was here. I was whole once.

He took a step closer, boots sinking into the sand, hands in his jacket pockets. “Still remember how to rip folks off, huh?”

She glanced up at him, just barely. “Who says this one’s not priceless?”

Joel smirked. “Better be. Our baby girl’s got high standards.”

That got a laugh. A real one—small, scratchy, but it cracked the stillness in a way nothing else had all day. Leela shook her head, still smiling, eyes on the necklace, watching the shell sway from its string.

A beat passed. Wind was threading through the bare bones of the city. Maybe this place had once been paradise. Joel didn’t know. All he saw now was wreckage. Absence. A ghost town choking on salt.

Behind them, far away, Ellie whooped, triumphant. “I told you, little bastard! Joel, look, that’s a motherfucking crab!”

Joel glanced over. She was crouched in the wet sand, a long stick in one hand, something small and wriggling and furious in the other. Her sleeves were shoved to her elbows, knees soaked through, hair wild in the wind. She grinned like she was twelve again. Like the world hadn’t burned down.

Another shriek from Ellie. “Holy shit—there’s more of them! A whole Jackson community!”

“Well, don’t just play with ’em. Grab a few. Might be good eatin’.”

Ellie wrinkled her nose, poking one with the tip of her stick. “Eat this? Dude, it’s got, like—claws. And it’s hard as shit.”

“That’s how you know it’s good,” Joel called back, deadpan. “Hard shell means there’s somethin’ sweet inside.”

Ellie gave him a look. “Oh, hear, hear—Wordsworth over here.”

Joel chuckled, shaking his head. “Just get a few, kiddo. We’ll see what we can do.”

“Fine,” she muttered. “But if it kills me, I’m haunting your lying ass.”

Then she dropped the crab anyway, watched it scuttle sideways into the surf with all the drama of a jail break, and burst out laughing—real, unguarded. Her laugh rippled across the beach like it didn’t know how rare it was. Like it didn’t think it was a goddamn miracle.

Joel turned back to Leela. His voice dropped, not meaning to get soft but unable to help it.

“So, is this what you pictured?”

He didn’t say the beach. He didn’t mean California. Didn’t mean the long road behind them—full of blood and breath and quiet, feral hope. Didn’t even mean the life they’d clawed together with broken fingernails and dogged luck.

Leela didn’t answer right away. She just looked out toward the horizon, the sharp line where grey sea met grey skies. Where the world used to open up into possibility, into summer vacations and shipping routes and postcards with skipping dolphins. Now it looked more like an ending. A sentence with no period.

Then she shook her head, just once. “Not even close.”

But she was still holding the shell in her hand. Still tying another knot in the twine. Still smiling, just barely. And somehow, that answer—quiet, and unfinished—was more honest than anything else she could’ve said.

Joel sat down beside her, his knees cracking like firewood. The cold bled through the seat of his jeans, but he didn’t flinch. Just sat. Facing the water.

Leela didn’t.

She was turned slightly away, angled toward the sand, toward the ground, like she’d taken some quiet oath never to look at the sea again. As if it had taken something and she wouldn’t give it the satisfaction of her eyes.

Joel laid his hand over hers, careful.

She stilled.

His palm was unpolished against hers, but he could still feel the tiny shape of the shell necklace beneath it. Warm from her skin. Light as a breath.

“Joel.”

Before she could ask him to get the fuck off her, he said, “Look, I just—”

“What do you think Maya’s going to be when she grows up?”

Leela’s voice was soft, half-swallowed by the sea wind. Not wistful, not dreamy. Just plain and curious, like she was asking about the tide.

Joel didn’t answer right away. His eyes slid back on the water—on the slow, thick roll of it, the lazy collapse of each wave as it dragged itself onto the sand. This landed hard—not because it was tragic, but because it was so normal.

And yet that question hung there. He rubbed his jaw in deep thought. That wasn’t a question people dared to ask anymore, not seriously.

Honey, what do you want to be when you grow up?

He'd asked Sarah that plenty of times. And her answer had been no-bullshit: a rockstar. He used to joke to her about it, how maybe she'd take her old man backstage one day and sign T-shirts with her primped face on it.

The world was too fucked-up now, no rulebook to follow. See, back in the old world, kids had answers ready. Doctor. Firefighter. Astronaut. Singer. Shit like that. You dreamed, you planned. You had options. Only now, the world didn’t want anything from its kids but survival. To grow up at all was a feat. To grow up and become something? That felt like a pipe dream.

Joel breathed out through his nose. He shifted in the sand, elbows on his knees, shoulders hunched against the wind.

“I dunno,” he said finally. “Ain’t somethin’ I let myself think about too much. We used to imagine the future. Now we’re just glad to get through the day.”

Leela said nothing. Just waited, steady, patient, the way she always did when she knew he wasn’t finished.

A bitter little smile curled the corner of his mouth. “Baby girl’d probably be a scavenger. Some real slick trader. Hustler like her mama used to be.”

Leela huffed softly.

“Maybe a sharpshooter,” Joel added. “Takes after Ellie. Bossy as hell.”

That made her laugh again—just a little. Joel felt it in his chest like the thinnest crack of sun through stormcloud.

He kept talking, quieter now. “Could be she ends up one of those quiet ones. People listen when she speaks. Not ‘cause she’s loud—but ‘cause she means her shit. Maybe that makes her a leader. Or a target.”

He hated that last part. But it was true.

The truth was—he didn’t really care what Maya became. He just wanted her to have the space to choose between gentleness and survival. To live long, safe, and full enough to even ask that question. And he hated the world for making him think all this shit.

“And maybe she’s just alive long enough for it to matter,” he finished. “It’s enough for me.”

Leela’s fingers paused at the shell’s knot.

Joel looked over at her, and she still wasn’t looking at the sea. Her face was turned away a little, but her eyes were distant—thinking hard, probably thinking too much.

“Does it scare you?” he asked.

She blinked slowly. “What does?”

“The future,” he stated. “What she might become.”

Leela was quiet for a long time. She pulled the twine taut, tied another knot. Maybe the third one in the same place.

Then she nodded, but it wasn’t sharp. As if something she’d carried for years, only just now saying out loud.

“I just can’t have Maya become like me, Joel,” she said.

Joel didn’t say anything because he knew what she meant. And she was fucking right.

Not just Leela's impossible intellect that she carried like a blade. Not Joel's desiccating anger. Not the endless spinning logic or the obsessive calculations that had driven her across the country in a haze of grief and purpose. Not the math or the memory or the way she could see ten steps ahead while the rest of them were still tripping over the first one.

No—she meant the burden. The self-blame. The detachment. The constant need to understand everything instead of just feeling it. The survival that looked like a function but was really just a retreat.

The way Joel disconnected. The guilt that never left. The way he didn’t flinch at corpses anymore because somewhere along the way, his empathy had learned to ration itself. The way he lived in his head because that was the only place he could guarantee no one would hurt him.

And because of all the ways they taught themselves to cope—none of them were life. They were pauses. Contractions. Damage control.

She sighed. “I thought I wanted that. I did. But after everything back there…”

She nodded toward the road that led back to the university. Toward where she'd left her hopes and regrets. A whole piece of her past.

“I realised that…” She tapped her temple, fingers light, like she was knocking on the side of something hollow. “She doesn’t need this.”

He didn’t press or fill the space like he normally would with some muttered acknowledgement, because this wasn’t a moment for patch jobs.

“This saved me,” she murmured. “The logic. The focus. It’s how I kept going after—after what happened. If I could just understand enough… if I could predict things, calculate the worst-case scenario, I could keep her safe.”

Her voice tightened. Just a bit. Joel heard it.

“She deserves more than that.”

Joel’s throat was dry. He swallowed hard, barely managing. “And now?”

Leela let out a long breath. Not weary. Just… stripped bare.

“Now I just want her to scream,” Leela said. “To run fast. To fall hard. To be loud, and wrong, and stupid—and free. I want her to feel so much that she doesn’t know where to put it. I want her to hit back, punch hard, when someone corners her. Not stand there frozen, plotting some clever escape like that’s gonna save her.”

Joel’s eyes flicked toward her.

She wasn’t looking at him. Still had her gaze fixed on the necklace in her lap, the shell swinging gently as she tied and re-tied the same knot like it was muscle memory. Like if she stopped moving, she’d splinter.

And goddamn.

That’s when it landed. What she was really saying.

He’d seen people go quiet in the worst moments of their lives—seen them freeze, let it happen, disappear behind their own eyes. Not because they were weak, but because someone, somewhere, had taught them that silence was safer than screaming. That survival meant outthinking, not resisting. That pain was something to calculate your way around.

Leela had been that sort of survivor.

“I couldn’t even save myself,” she said, bitter, flat, after a beat.

The fuck kind of thing was that to say? Making it seem like it just made sense?

Joel’s fingers tightened gently around hers, unable to unclench his jaw. “That ain’t your fault,” he reassured to an extent, teeth gritting. “You sayin’ that like it was your choice.”

She said nothing. But the silence was answer enough. And Joel couldn’t sit with that.

“I don’t give a damn what you think you didn’t do,” he muttered, heat rising in his throat like bile. “Someone took... somethin’. They did that. You think being smart, or planning a way out—fuckin’ hell—none of that would’ve mattered.”

She shook her head once. Not in argument—just acknowledgement. “No. But it still happened. And I did nothing.”

Then, finally, she looked at him.

There was no shame in her eyes. Just a brutal clarity. The kind that only came from staring something dead in the face for years and deciding to live anyway.

“I know what I am, Joel. I know what it took to survive. I know what it turned me into. And I don’t want that for her.”

Joel didn’t speak right away. There was nothing to fix. Nothing to deny. He understood her too well for that. She wasn’t afraid Maya wouldn’t make it.

She was afraid Maya would—by becoming someone like her.

“Baby, she’s gonna carry us,” he said, a promise in his voice. “But she ain’t gonna be us.”

Then he reached out, covered her hand with his—rough skin on hers, grounding her.

“She’s got us, Leela,” he added, more quietly.

And he meant every word. He knew what it was to survive through retreat. To mistake numbness for control. To wear grief like armour and call it strength.

Leela didn’t flinch. But she didn’t smile either. Her face softened—like she wanted to believe him, that she was someone worth having.

“I hope so,” she said.

They sat there a while longer, the tide crawling up toward their boots whilst Ellie shouted at them about a jellyfish. Joel felt the sting in his joints when the winds picked up, faster, saltier, sharper.

He looked down at the shell again, their hands twined around it. Small. Pink. Still shining faintly inside. Something you’d pick up on a beach day with a little girl who didn’t know the world yet.

They couldn’t offer Maya that clean world they had lived in. But they could hand her a few pieces worth carrying. And she’d figure out what to build.

For one brief moment, he let himself believe his baby girl would have the chance to answer that question one day—for real.

What do you want to be when you grow up, Maya?

X

The fire had sunk lower to the forest floor, just embers now, red, pulsing like a heartbeat under ash. Shadows lean long against the trees. Night smells like salt and old leaves, smoke in cloth, and distant sea. Boots scuffed quietly on dirt. The silence that only came late, when everyone else was asleep, or pretending to be.

“Can’t sleep either?”

“No.”

“You okay?”

“Just thinking.”

“Night too loud? I've got headphones.”

A pause. Then: “Thanks... I'm missing home.”

“Oh. Me, too..”

“Hm. It's the longest I've been away from it.”

Another pause. “Yeah?”

“I keep wondering if I’d feel different if I got back. Things just magically change.”

“You wouldn’t.”

Fabric creaks. One of them tugs their sleeves down.

“Still mad at him?”

Pause.

“…He just left. You saw how bad it got.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“And he didn’t tell me a word about the Fireflies. Or Caltech.”

“He thought he was protecting you. You know how he is.”

“That’s the problem.”

Another pause. “He said nothing. Just packed up and left. Like I’d only get in the way.”

“I know.”

“You think I meant it?”

“You sounded like you did.”

“I think I did, too. Then. I was just... so angry.”

“But now?”

A defeated sigh. “I don’t know.”

A beat.

“Maya watches the world like he does, too. I noticed.”

“She does that because she learns from him. You can’t raise a kid halfway in, halfway out. You can’t teach them to trust and then disappear when it counts.”

“Yeah, but—” Someone exhales sharply. Tosses a pebble into the fire pit. It hisses. “He came back, didn’t he?”

“Only because we followed him.”

“He came back because he’s never gonna stop coming back. That’s the whole point of him.”

Silence. A reckoning in the dark.

“You know what he told me once?”

“What?”

“He said—he didn’t think people like us got second chances. That we ruin too much. And still, every time he looks at Maya, it’s like he believes she’s the one thing he didn’t fuck up.”

Silence.

“He loves her more than he knows how to say. But he shows it. In everything. That’s the closest someone like him gets to a promise.”

“…he still left.”

“I didn't say he's good at it. He's a goddamn dick. And he was wrong.”

The voice is calm, blunt. Not trying to win. Just telling it as it was.

“But so were you. Saying you’d take her. Like she’s a thing you can lift out of him.”

Quiet again. Then: “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“I know.”

“I just—she’s all I have. Everything good in me went to her. I had to follow him, and I have to keep her safe. Where do I win?”

“Jesus, she is safe.”

“No, I mean... he’ll break her heart someday, I know it.”

“Fuck no. Never Joel.”

“Hmph. You sound sure.”

“He didn’t break me. And the world gave him every reason to.”

Silence again. A longer moment, this time.

“Maya asks about you when you’re not there, right? She misses you. She asks for you. But when Joel’s gone? She watches the door. She won't leave it. That’s the difference.”

A breath.

“You take her away, and you’ll still have her. But she’ll never stop watching that door.”

Then the fire popped. A shift of posture. The brush of hair against cloth.

“He didn’t get to do all that before, you know. The whole marriage and two-parent household thing. Not with…”

Another breath.

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Mm-hm.”

“And you’re still thinking about kicking his ass out.”

A creaking silence.

“I’m not good at staying.”

“Me neither.”

“Then why do you?”

A small sound. Could be a laugh or a sigh. “Because he’s good at making me think I can. I’ve seen what that man does when he loves someone.”

“Doesn’t that scare you?”

“No.”

A beat. “It really should.”

“I guess that’s the difference. I'm not scared of him. Not like you are.”

“I'm not scared of Joel.”

“Bite me.”

“It’s more about what he’d give up. For us. For her. What it would turn him into.”

“A dead man.”

No response. But from the dark—

“You think you’re protecting him?”

“I think I’m trying to keep us all breathing.”

“Well. That’s one stupid way to live.”

A rustle. Someone folding their arms. “Do you hate me?”

“What?”

“For saying all this. For thinking it.”

“Of course not. If anything, it makes you more real to me.”

“…But?”

“But if you take her from him—really take her—it’ll kill him.”

“I’m not trying to hurt him.”

The silence after that settles deeper. One of them pokes at the embers with a stick, ash dancing up like fireflies.

Then, softer: “I know. That’s why it would.”

X

As if into the mouth of some ancient beast, the Jackson gates shut behind them with a final clank, steel locking steel, rusting, slow, a reluctant welcome, and for a second, it sounded like a cell door closing.

Joel walked under the shadow of it and didn’t say a word.

The sun hung low on the horizon, flooding the snow-melted streets of Jackson with a weary saffron. Familiar smells maundered through the air—woodsmoke, cattle, hay, pine needles thawing on the wind. There was boisterous laughter somewhere. Hammers. And it all felt just close enough to touch, but not quite real. Like something playing behind a looking glass.

He was back.

Somehow, again, he was still standing. Luck—or stubbornness, someone up there still not ready to let him rest—was still with him. He’d gone to California half-dead and half-stupid, and still made it out. And more than that—they had come for him. Ellie. Leela. They’d followed. Chosen to come after him.

Because he was worth saving. Because someone out there still cared if he lived or died.

That part stuck like a splinter in his chest.

He barely had time to register the weight of it before Tommy was on him, hauling him into a rib-crushing hug, laughing through a wet voice.

“Goddamn, you tough bastard. You just don’t die, huh?”

“Too much to live for, baby brother.”

Joel didn’t hug back. Not at first. Then he did—hands slow, uncooperative, gripping Tommy’s shoulders like he had to feel the bones to believe this was real.

Joel pulled back from Tommy’s grip like he’d just come up for air.

The noise of Jackson started to creep back in—the call of someone on a ladder, boots on pavement, a dog yapping in the distance. All the moving pieces of life.

He turned to his brother, voice low. “Maya?”

Tommy smiled, but it was tight around the edges.

“She’s doin’ just fine,” he said. “Caught the sniffles crying her eyes out, but she’s fine.”

Joel stiffened. “She sick?”

“I said she’s fine, Joel,” Tommy said, firmer this time. “She… she just missed her daddy, is all.”

Joel looked away.

Of course she did. And he hadn’t been there. Not for her fever. Not for the nights she cried herself hoarse. Not for the mornings when she didn’t understand why he hadn’t come back. He’d walked out with nothing but a note and the ghost of an apology, like that would hold up in a house full of silence.

They passed through the main square, Joel’s boots heavy on the stone. It all looked the same; that was what struck him most. The tedium. The cruel, gutting way the world carried on like nothing had changed. Like he hadn’t nearly drowned. Like Ellie hadn’t pulled him back from the brink. Like Leela hadn’t followed him into hell and back.

Like Maya hadn’t cried herself sick.

Then, they turned the corner. And there it was.

The big, white house.

For a moment, Joel took it in. How much he missed this place.

Its porch was half-shadowed, steps dusted with snow. The gate creaked in the wind. He used to hear it from the bedroom. Used to fix it every two weeks, he could never find the right hinges. Used to—

He swallowed.

It used to be a shape in the distance. Something he’d catch through the branches of the old oak tree on mornings, sitting like a clean dream against the sky. Back then, it was just a house. Then it was her house. Then his. A home that was anchored in history and laughter, and Leela’s quiet hum as she flipped a page in her notebook. Full of Maya’s shrieks, toy horses skittering across the floor, her squeaky boots thumping against the wood.

Now, it just looked... tall. Unreachable. Like he’d have to climb back up the whole goddamn mountain to get inside again.

He had left something whole and returned to find it grown in his absence, evolved without him—carved deeper, tighter, stronger. Or maybe that was just him. His fear of losing.

Tommy called out, “Maria’s up ahead—she brought baby girl down the block to get some fresh air. Cranky all goddamn morning. She won't listen to anyone unless it's me.”

“Why's that?”

He sighed. “Guess I remind her of her old man.”

Jesus Christ, this was going to hurt like a bitch.

Joel’s head lifted.

And then he saw her.

A small figure on the porch.

Standing just like she used to, on the top step—like she always did when she waited for him after patrol. One mittened hand resting on the railing, the other clutching that old stuffed horse, ears chewed and fur matted from love.

She was watching the path. Waiting. Lips trembling like her whole world had been breaking every hour they were gone.

His feet wouldn’t move.

Her curls were a little softer now, matted, darker. Her coat was buttoned crooked, boots mismatched, nose splotchy from a recovering fever and maybe something else—like she knew something was coming. Some part of her did.

He took a half-step forward and stopped himself.

Then—

“Mama!”

The word left her like a crack splitting open. Her eyes widened. Her whole body leaned forward as if pulled. Arms out. Little hands grabbing at the air.

“Mama, mama—ha—come—Mama—”

It was the kind of sound only babies could make. Too raw to fake, too loud for their size.

And she teetered on the step, wailing.

Not to him. Not even a glance.

Just attempting to barrel forward to her mother, stubby legs churning, the toy horse flopping from her hand.

Joel felt it like a bullet.

Every effort she took—away from him, toward Leela—landed heavy in his gut. It was instinct. Pure. Unforgiving. She had learned that when someone disappears, you hold tighter to the one who doesn’t. The one who stayed.

Joel barely noticed Leela rush past him, knees bending, a ghost trying to reassemble a body—and didn’t even register the blur of movement until she was halfway to the porch, arms already outstretched. Her eyes were wet but unshed, her mouth twitching like she was keeping herself stitched shut by force.

Maya crashed into her, as if her mother made her real.

“Mama, Mama…”

No trembling. No collapse.

And the sound she made then—Joel had never heard it before. Not from her. Not from any baby. It was half-relief, half-fury, all heartbreak. Like something in her had cracked wide open from the waiting.

He staggered, stopped walking altogether.

Leela lifted her, spreading kisses on her cheeks, nose and hair, rocking her like she was trying to put every second of the last few days back inside her arms. Maya’s sobs were hiccuping now, her face buried in Leela’s neck, her whole body trembling.

She pulled Maya in like she meant to disappear with her. Pressed her face into her curls, kissed the top of her head and closed her eyes like that was where all the warmth lived now, shushed her with slow, circular bounces, murmuring nonsense in that gentle, rhythmic tone only mothers had.

“It’s okay, Maya. Shh, Mama’s here now. Mama’s here.”

While Joel stood frozen on the road.

He didn’t know when his hand had clenched into a fist or when his breath had left him.

He didn’t feel anger. Not at Leela. Not even to himself. It was something deeper. Older. Like watching a life he’d dreamed of grow old without him. A desolation.

And Maya—was still crying. Still hiccupping. Her fists balled into Leela’s coat. She hadn’t even looked at him. Or maybe she had, but didn’t know what she was looking for.

He wanted to step closer. Just one more step. Reach out. Soothe her. Say something. But his feet might as well have been nailed to the frozen earth.

He had nothing in his hands. Not even the strength to say her name.

Ellie moved up beside Leela, brushing Maya’s curls back from her sticky, tear-wet face. She said something. Leela nodded. And they all began to walk up the porch steps together.

Joel didn’t follow. Not yet.

He just watched.

Watched how tightly Leela held their daughter. Watched Ellie glance back at him once, her face unreadable, before she jogged past him and followed Maria and Tommy down the road, and away.

Watched his whole life move ahead of him, step by step, without turning around.

Leela’s arms were tight around Maya’s little body, the baby’s sobs quieter now but still hiccupping against her mother’s shoulder.

All he knew was that he’d left all of this behind with nothing but a note and a mission and the idea that maybe, just maybe, he could do something that mattered. Maybe he could fix something.

He eventually trailed behind them like a ghost.

They reached the porch. Leela didn’t pause. Just hitched Maya higher on her hip, the little girl whimpering against her shoulder, and stepped inside.

Maya twisted as they crossed the threshold, her arms flailing, her cries rising in volume. A shrill pleading screech.

“Da-da! Come, come!”

“Maya,” Leela tried to shush.

“No, no! Da-da, pease!”

Her voice punched through him, sharp and high and raw.

“Da-da-da-da—...”

The door closed with a soft, final click. Over.

Somewhere inside, the baby girl's cries still carried over in fresh pricks at his pummeled heart.

Joel stood there, one foot still planted on the step below, like a man halfway to salvation and halfway to hell. He hadn’t moved. His hand—useless at his side—twitched, searching for something it had forgotten how to reach.

The latch echoed louder than any gunshot he’d heard these past weeks.

He stared at the wood grain of the door, the same one he'd walked through a hundred times before, and now couldn’t seem to approach. A stupid part of him still thought maybe it’d open again. That she’d come back, that she’d say—something. Let him hold Maya just once.

But the house stayed still.

So Joel sat. Dropped like a felled thing onto the top step, legs spreading, elbows propped on his knees, fingers pressed to his lips. Because where else did he have to go?

He stared at the dirt packed under the railings, at the porch slats he’d helped mend last summer. He wasn’t sure he had the right to look at any of this anymore.

It hurt to breathe. Not from the bruised ribs or the deep-healing wound in his side. The knowing. The understanding that he’d done this. The rot. The shame. The guilt. The want to fight Leela, argue, and bash against the door.

And when he rubbed a hand over his face, he felt it—wet.

Tears. Real fucking ones.

He stared down at the shine on his fingertips like it was a new language he didn’t speak.

Crying. Goddamn. So he was still capable of that.

After all this time. After the blood. After the fear. After the killing.

It wasn’t the pain of the trip. Not the near-drowning, not the way his ribs still clicked when he breathed too deep. Not even the damage done to Leela’s precious math notebook, still folded at the bottom of his pack like a prayer he couldn’t read.

It was this silence that used to be his favourite harmony. This porch. This big white house across the street, standing like a lighthouse in the middle of the Wyoming snow.

His big, white house.

Or maybe it never had been his. Maybe he’d only been borrowing this life. A thief in someone else’s dream.

In this big dream, he might not be welcome anymore. He’d left thinking he could prove something. That there was still good he could do. That it mattered if he bled for it. That the sacrifice would mean some shit when he brought it back.

Only now—he was just a man sitting on the porch, hands empty, spine bent like a penitent.

He was still the loser. Always had been, hadn't he? A man who couldn't hold onto what mattered, even when it was pressed into his hands. Slipping through his callused fingers, sand in an hourglass.

“Da-da.”

A tiny voice. Raw. Exhausted from crying.

He blinked. Looked down.

Two tiny fists rested against his knee, barely covering them.

She stood there—his baby girl—in her yellow footie pyjamas, curls plastered to her forehead with sweat and tears, her cheeks flushed and snotty, a fist now halfway to her mouth. A warrior, somehow. She looked like she'd marched out here on stubbornness alone.

“Up, up, Da-da,” she said, her voice barely more than a breath, lips rounded to an 'O'.

He didn’t move. His hands stayed clenched on his knees, like he wasn’t sure if they were still allowed to touch her.

He just looked at her—like he was seeing a miracle and wasn’t sure he deserved to touch it. This small miracle with her tangled hair and her crooked little mouth, trying to be brave. Her big brown eyes stared straight through him, full of a deep, solemn thing children shouldn’t carry but sometimes did.

Maya wobbled slightly, off balance, still reaching. Her coat sleeve bunched at the elbow, her fingers finding a fold of his jacket and tugging. It wasn’t strong. It wasn’t a demand. Just a little pull. A tiny act of faith.

“Pease, da-da.”

That was it.

That was all it took.

He broke. Open like a thundercloud. A dam giving way after too many winters.

No big sound. No shudder. Just a quiet, helpless noise from the back of his throat, a beam giving out in a storm, as he leaned forward, reached for her with hands that shook, that had pulled triggers and choked men and now dared to try and lift someone so little and innocent. Someone still his.

He drew her in like she was the only warmth left in the world.

She wrapped her arms around him, little boots stomping onto his ribs, one arm locked around his neck, her fingers fisting the collar of his shirt, and burrowed in like she’d never left him. Like there’d been no time apart. Like he hadn’t abandoned her.

She just clung. The way babies always do. She didn’t care about the mess. Her dainty love hadn’t learned conditions yet.

His throat narrowed, his chest hitched once, sharp—then again, then again. He dropped his face into the crook of her neck and let it come, loosening that lock in him that had been latched since Sarah died. The kind of crying that doesn’t make sound, that just happens. Tears soaking into the fabric of her coat, into her hair, into his beard. He breathed her in like it might fix something, might make him whole.

“I got you, baby girl,” he sniffed.

She smelled like cinnamon. Like sleep. Like their kitchen in the mornings when Leela was fresh from her shower, Maya would toddle in and reach for a bite of breakfast with both hands.

She smelled like everything he’d fought for. Everything he might’ve lost.

Maya leaned back slowly, the softest untangling of her arms, her tiny body still half-draped over his chest. She blinked at him, her brows drawn close in a look far too serious for her little face. Her mouth tugged slightly downward, curious and concerned all at once.

Joel tried to smile for her. Tried to smooth his face. “I'm okay, it's okay.”

But she saw it anyway. The tears, still clinging to his lashes, streaked into his beard.

She stared, her little hand floating uncertainly in the air between them, fingers flexing like she knew there was something she was supposed to do but wasn’t quite sure how.

Then—clumsily, earnestly—she reached up and touched him, just one little hand against his cheek.

Joel looked from her eyes to her palm.

So small, it barely registered, but he felt the gentle tap, the warm pressure. He felt her try to wipe it—like she’d seen done before—dragging her palm across his stubble, awkward, too hard, leaving a streak of baby drool behind.

She sniffed. Then tried again, this time gentler. The way her mama would do it.

“Mm-mm, no,” she told him.

And then—her other hand went to his hair.

A soft, patting motion. Adorable, pure toddler comfort. No finesse, no words.

She looked at him like she was waiting for him to stop crying. Like she believed he could. That he should. Because Mama always did, when she wiped Maya’s tears. Because after the tears came warm arms. And sometimes applesauce.

Joel let out a sound that wasn’t a laugh, wasn’t a sob—just breath. Cracked, quiet. “You takin' care of me?”

His hand cupped the back of her head. His forehead rested against hers, their noses nearly touching. Her fingers were still in his hair.

“Da-da, no, no,” she resonated.

Joel’s heart clenched again—but differently this time. More like remembering what it was for. Beating for her. Alive for this.

He kissed her temple, the warmth of her skin soaking through his bones.

For a moment, the world held still.

No howling wind. No boots on snow. No years of silence pressing down between now and what he’d lost. Just this: the tiny weight of her heart against his chest. Her trust, folded into his jacket like a brass button or her mama's ring in his pocket.

The floorboard behind him creaked.

Joel didn’t lift his head. He felt her before he saw her. The air changed when Leela entered a space—like some internal pressure recalibrated. Softer, but tighter. She didn’t take up more room than she needed, never had. But somehow, her presence always rearranged it.

She stepped to the railing beside him and leaned, arms resting along the wood. The porch light behind her cast a low, golden ring along her dark, frizzed-out hair on her shoulders. The fire inside flickered behind the curtains.

She said nothing at first. Just looked at him. Looked at them.

Like she was trying to map it out—this man, this child, this picture she couldn’t quite trust yet, this picture that didn’t match the one she’d carried around for too long—of absence, of damage, of a man who left too much behind.

Joel didn’t look at her straight on. His eyes stayed on the horizon past the railing, that dim stretch of pine and powder blue, mountains against the dusk that bled into dark. He could feel her gaze, though. The questions in it. The ache. The absence they were both pretending didn’t sit between them like a third body.

“Joel,” she murmured, the first ripple on still water.

He swallowed. His arms tightened almost instinctively around Maya, who shifted with a faint hum, fist tucked against her mouth once more.

“Just let me hold her for a bit,” he said. It came out low, like an apology, or a prayer through gritted teeth.

A breath passed. Then, quietly—

“You can hold her as long as you want.”

He finally looked at her. Her face was turned to the dark, but he could see the fine edge of exhaustion there. Not the kind that came from no sleep—but from too many nights spent enduring what no one saw.

Her voice was softer when she added, “Do you want to shower first?”

Joel blinked, the words hitting him sideways. What a normal fucking thing to say. So regular.

His mind fumbled with it—like she'd offered him a cup of coffee in a warzone. Like there hadn’t been a canyon gaping between them only days ago, carved out by silence and anger and too many things said too late.

The absurdity of it almost made him laugh. Almost. But the sound got stuck somewhere in his throat, tangled with something older and harder.

The wind stirred again, tugging at the hem of her sweater. She didn’t smooth it down. Just let it flutter around her thighs like she didn’t feel the cold.

“Leela,” he said, low, worn, like gravel under tired boots.

She didn’t look at him. Didn’t speak right away. Just leaned a little further into the porch railing, her fingers curled loose around the wood. Shoulders rising. Falling.

Quieter this time—less like she believed it, more like she needed to—“Come inside, Joel.”

Not an invitation. Not a plea. Just something said because it had to be. Like muscle memory. Like faith said out loud.

“You don’t belong anywhere else.” A beat. Then, “And it’s cold outside.”

Joel looked down at the little girl in his arms. Maya’s cheek was pressed to his chest, her lips parted, her breath warm through his shirt. Her small hand clung to the collar of his jacket like she thought he might still disappear if she let go.

He felt it again—his daughter. His reminder. His consequence.

She came to me, he thought. She still comes to me.

Even now. After everything.

He shifted his weight and rose, careful not to jostle Maya. His knees ached. That old pain in his spine flared, but he barely felt it. She was heavier than he remembered. That, too, was a gift.

Across from him, Leela didn’t move. She didn’t offer him a hand. Didn’t clear the way. But she didn’t block it, either.

The door behind her stayed open.

Oh, here they were again.

Same porch. Same house. Same damn man, more or less.

But different. He wasn’t pounding on the door this time. Wasn’t driven half-mad by a baby that wouldn’t stop crying. He wasn’t walking in blind and bitter and ready to do a good thing just to silence a bad one.

Now he carried that baby in his arms. His baby. His girl.

And Leela—she was the one with the door now. Not just the one behind him. The one she kept closed for years, locked and latched and bolted from the inside, because too many people had barged through without asking.

Joel stepped forward.

Not past her. Not through her. To her.

The space between them was close. Intimate. He stopped just short of touching her, close enough to feel her breath ghosting warm in the cold.

She turned her head, finally. Just enough to see him.

Their eyes met. A half-second. A heartbeat.

There was no forgiveness in that look. Only recognition. And maybe—God help them both—want. A bit of love. Still there, under the rubble and the ruin.

He didn’t say, Thank you. Couldn’t. Didn’t think they’d be enough if he did. And she didn’t say, Welcome home.

When he stepped through the door beside her, the warmth met him like a memory.

As he crossed the threshold, this time he came to carry it all. To be part of it.

Maya stirred in his arms, murmuring something soft and wordless. Her thumb found her mouth again. Her head dropped against his shoulder like she knew this place of hers. Like her little body remembered what his mind kept trying to forget.

Joel blinked hard, the air in his lungs thick.

It was the same spot he’d once stood when he almost didn’t come back. When he’d looked at Leela in that doorway and thought about forgetting this ever happened.

Now she stood just behind him. A quiet key turning in an old, rusted lock.

And he thought: This is how it happens. Not with a grand gesture. Not with a reckoning or a flood of apologies. Not with big dreams of another life coming crashing down.

But like this.

A door not closed in anger. A man not barging in. A home not yet reclaimed, but not lost either.

Step by step. Word by word. Warmth bleeding slowly into cold skin.

Not a finish line or a full repair.

A place to start again.

One last time.

X

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“”

[letmeeaseyourburden]

Your husband laid out a school uniform for you. Pretty but very modest bra and panties, knee-high socks, and ribbons for pigtails.

"I want your makeup very sweet and innocent. Be ready in 40 minutes." Your husband told you as he put on a new suit. He wouldn't answer any of your questions. Just raising an eyebrow and pointedly looking at clothing you had yet to put on.

During the drive, he still said nothing. Still not speaking until he leads you into a classroom. Your submissive female friends wearing matching uniforms, sitting at their desks.

"Take a seat in the front row." Not that you would have picked any other.

Your husband is stepping to the blackboard and writing "Sex Education 101."

"This class is intended for young women. Who may be hearing confusing things from other people and the internet."

Stepping to the lectern, he begins to lecture you. Talking about how you are more emotional than men. How your hormones control you more than boys. That despite what bitter women might tell you, being a homemaker would make you happier.

Then he points at you. "Come up here." Reaching up under your skirt and yanking your panties to your ankles before pulling up your skirt.

"This is your cunt. It is the single most valuable part of you. Your hushand is going to use it to pleasure himself. And you will use it for growing babies. You should only touch it with a man's permission." His fingers running along your slit before he exposes your clit.

"This is your clit. It's the reason your cunt controls you. Touching it can feel good. But sex is for male pleasure. So touching it too much can give you confusing thoughts. That is why you need permission from your husband."

His hand sliding two fingers into your wet little pussy. Slowly finger fucking you. "It's going to get wet when you get aroused. This is to make it easier for a man's cock to fuck you, like this." Letting all of the girls come up and look closely as he fingers you. Several of them commenting on how much wetness is on his fingers.

"That is because she is a needy little whore. She desperately needs to be owned by a man. It makes her good wifey material."

Abruptly, he pulls his fingers out. His hands turning you around and bending you over. Your legs are forced apart till your panties stretch. Spreading your ass cheeks. "This is your asshole. Your husband will want to fuck it. It's tighter than your cunt and it's rare for a women to orgasm from it. Do not deny your husband this unless you want to end up divorced."

Inviting the girls up again, telling them to get some lube and try fingering your ass. That way, they can understand just how tight it is. "That tightness makes it extra appealing."

His hand grabs your hair to turn you around and make you face the class. "See how worked up she gets from just this little attention." Gesturing to the slickness running down your thighs. "Just imagine how wet she would be if you were men."

Getting his fingers wet with your arousal before pushing them into your mouth. "And this is the last useful hole you have. A mouth. You use it to suck your man's cock and eat his ass."

Taking his fingers out and slapping you for sucking on them. "When you become a bitch in heat like her, you will suck on anything a man puts in your mouth. It's nature's way of reminding you of your purpose."

His strong hands push you to your knees where he shoves his cock in your mouth. "Now most of the time when a man's cock is in your mouth you should worship it. But sometimes your man will want to remind you of your place."

Grabbing your pigtails, your husband fucks your face in front of your girlfriends. "Notice how she is dripping onto the floor now. She loves this. The way some of you are squirming, I bet you'd like to change places with her."

The classroom filled with the sounds of you gagging. Your simple pretty makeup running down your face. But your husband doesn't finish in your mouth. No, he pulls you standing by your hair, then bends you over the desk you were sitting at.

Shoving his cock into your cunt. "Some of you might still have doubts about the nature of women." Pulling your hair so they can see your face clearly.

"See how stupid she looks when I fuck her? All of her silly little brain power is focused on pleasing me and preparing her body to be bred." And you do look stupid being fucked in front of everyone. Wailing with pleasure as you feel your man cumming in you as your friends masterbate to the sight of you.

[silvercrow0117]

About me: -Developmentally disabled college student suffering from back pain -Attempting to get my Bachelors in History with a minor in Anthropology -I am an adult so I will tag any adult content -I am a white woman -Minors may interact but I am an adult and request that I am treated as such -No DMs or Asks enabled at this time -Will add to this at a later date Thank you

[lnightmrs]

Professor's Pet (Yandere Gojo Satoru x Professor Reader)

Being a professor in an university for rich kids meant that dealing with spoiled students who tried to bribe their way into good grades was nothing new to you. Your latest troublesome student, however, was starting to become more than you could handle.

Warnings: Blackmail, bribery, reader is older and married, gojo is like 22-23, sexual coercion, oral (m. receiving) dubious consent, implied noncon, ooc gojo,

Every year, you stand up at the lectern in front of your latest batch of final year undergrad physics students and tell them the same thing.

The only way to pass this course is to actually fucking study.

This may be one of those elite colleges that the 1% send their snotty kids off to more so for the status than the actual education, but you would sooner run across 5 miles of glass barefooted before you became one of the many professors who’d take a bribe to change a failing grade.  

And every year without fail, at least five students will ignore your warning and make you come out to your office hours to try and bribe, blackmail or beg for those additional points to prove that they could be an exception. And in your seven years of running the thermodynamics course, you’ve never given in.

So when Satoru Gojo requested the 3pm slot shortly after the quarterly assignment grades came out, you already knew what was coming.

You were already somewhat familiar with the behaviour and quirks of Mr. Gojo despite this being the first course of yours that he enrolled in. He was a bright kid, according to what his previous professors told you, a possible nobel-prize level physicist in the making. The problem was that he knew it. He didn’t even have to say anything to showcase his arrogance. Just by the way he sat on the small couch in your office, snowy-locked head resting on its back, lean arms splayed across it, and his long, jean-clad legs propped up on your very delicate coffee table, you knew that this was a man who had never been humbled in his entire life.

Hopefully, that was going to change.

“Lovely office you got here, prof. More spacious than I expected.” He leaned his head in your direction, where you were resting against your desk a few feet away, arms folded.

“And might I also add that you look way more beautiful in natural light? Those harsh overheads in the lecture hall have been draining all the colour from your –“

“Let’s skip the attempts at flattery, Mr. Gojo.” You cut him off, rolling your eyes.  “You said in your request email that you wanted to talk about the last assignment?”

“Oh yeah!” he sat up a little. “Well, you gave me a 42 on that quiz.”

“Yes. That’s how many points you scored.”

“You see, I needed at least a 50 to pass.”

 “I’m aware of how the grading scheme works. So?”

“Sooo,” he was fully upright now, reaching for something in his satchel. “If you’re as kind as you are gorgeous, you’d bump my grade up by 8 measly points.” He pulled out an envelope and waved it in the air with a smug grin.  “And you’ll get something extra special if you raise it to a 70.”

You had to admit, this level of condescension and audacity was certainly unique compared to the usual demeanour of your bribers, but it certainly wasn’t going to shake you.

“I don’t change grades or take bribes, Mr. Gojo. I said this at the very first class.” You sighed.

“C’mon Teach, I wouldn’t say this is a bribe,” he set the envelope down on the coffee table. “I’m just giving you the chance to buy yourself something nice.”

“Son, everything I own in my closet is designer. My purse is Coach. I don’t need to rely on the pocket money of spoiled rich kids to buy nice things.” You replied flatly.

There was a brief pause. You swore that you saw his smug little grin falter for a moment, but it returned as soon as he started to speak again.

“Oh I get it now!” he rose from his seat and sauntered towards you. “A self-made woman like you needs more than just plain money to grease your palms, don’t you?”

Before you could shift, he was looming right in front of you, large hands placed on both sides of where you sat on the desk, his face dangerously close to yours.

“You need something a bit sweeter, don’t you?” he breathed, his voice silky.  He leaned closer, sunglasses tilting just enough for you to catch a glimpse of his bright blue eyes. “When was the last time you let someone fresh-faced take you for a ride, hmm? I bet it’s been-“

“G-R-O-S-S.” you deadpanned, pushing him away. “I wouldn’t risk my job for money, but you think I would risk it and my marriage for some mediocre play? You’re lucky I won’t report you for misconduct.”

Usually, when it came down to the situation where the briber tried to seduce you, your method of rejecting them with disgust would generate enough embarrassment for them to regain their self-awareness and leave.  Gojo, however, simply huffed, looking more annoyed than ashamed.

“You’re being real difficult you know, prof.”

“A woman is nothing is without her principles, Mr. Gojo.” You replied. “And frankly, I’m quite tired of you and the other spoiled students who think they can ignore my sole boundary and buy their way out of their mistakes.”  You scooped up his satchel and tossed it towards him.  He took the hint and headed towards the door, a defeated scowl fully replacing the smirk from earlier.  You recalled the praises the rest of the department sung about him, and how, at least when it came to academics, he didn’t match your usual suspects.

“For a failing grade it’s not even that bad.” You confided. “If you get high scores on the mid-term and 2nd assignment, you’d be in a good position for the final. But that’s only if you understand the material, which I know you’re capable of doing. You’re too brilliant of a student to be playing these kinda games.”  He paused a bit at your words before continuing into the hallway.  You watched his back from the doorway.

“If you need my actual assistance, you know my office hours!” you shouted after him.

He simply waved in response.

>>>>>>>> 

“Do you think I should transfer to another university?” you looked across the dinner table at your husband, Makoto, who was preoccupied with his meal until he registered your question.

“Why?” he asked, mouth still partially full. “Don’t tell me that Gojo guy is your final straw.”

“I mean, it’s gotten to the point where even the potential nobel prize students don’t wanna work earnestly! Most of the professors also don’t care and take the bribes and some of them even tease me about it! I don’t know, it feels like I’m the only hard-headed bitch in the entire faculty who wants to maintain some kind of integrity and-"

You feel a warm hand cup your cheek, Makoto’s signature method of calming you. Your frustrated eyes met with his gentle gaze, and he maintained this gentleness as he spoke.

“Sweetheart, I’ll support anything you want to do, but you need to make sure you’re not stressing yourself out over something that’s not within your control. It’s not your responsibility to fix the school’s culture. Just do your best. Which is usually phenomenal.” He smiled. You couldn’t help but return it. Your eyes followed him as he picked up the plates to load up the dishwasher.

“And who knows? Maybe your words got through to Mr. Future Nobel Prize and the next time he wants to see you is to discuss the work.” He paused. “Although, I will admit, the thought of a supposedly handsome young man who tried to seduce my wife spending time alone with her makes me uneasy. How tall did you say he was again?”

You chuckled. “Relax, hotshot. There’s only one handsome man in the entire world I’d let near my privates, and I’m married to him. Besides, I’m sure a healthy pretty boy like him isn’t actually interested in old hags like me.”

He walked over and pressed a kiss to the top of your head. “It’s still possible, you’re the most beautiful hag I’ve ever seen.”

>>>>>>>> 

Three days later, Gojo was sitting haphazardly on your office couch again.

He had requested the 4pm timeslot this time, which took place an hour after the lecture. It was rare for students to return after you reject their offers, and usually when they did, it was to test their luck again, so when you heard the words that fell out of his mouth, you did a double take.

“You said... you said want to… discuss the topic from today??” you stammered.

“Ugh,” he groaned, looking away from your clearly astonished expression. “Stop looking at me like I grew another pair of eyes.”

“This isn’t some sort of prank, right? There aren’t any hidden cameras anywhere?” you started scanning the room.

“Jeez lady, what kind of students have you had to deal with?” he said, bemused. “Look, I just put some thought into what you said the other day.” He scratched the back of his head. “I am better than grovelling for a grade. I just... I never failed an exam before this course, so I felt kind of…embarrassed. I wanted to hide it.”

You leaned forward, meeting his crystalline eyes. “There’s nothing to be embarrassed about kid. Even Einstein failed shit at some point or another. What’s a real sign of intelligence is that you came to me.” You plopped down on the couch next to him.

“So, let’s get started! What are you having trouble with?”

>>>>>>>>>>>> 

Before you knew it, Satoru (he insisted you call him that now) had become a part of your work routine. He would come to your office hours after every lecture to review the topics. He’d email you with any burning questions on his mind. You even gave him your work cell number so he could call you for guidance during the midterm project.  His attitude did a 180 too. He started showing up early to lectures instead of rolling in a half hour late. He answered questions when asked. If he caught you in the hallways on the way to your next teaching, he’d offer to carry your books for you. Sometimes, you’d let him.

With the frequency of his visits, it was only natural that eventually the topics would occasionally steer away from just academics. Of course, you made sure to keep the small talk within a professional line, but you would be lying if you said you didn’t enjoy just shooting the breeze with him. When he’s not humble bragging about his status or smarts, Satoru was actually a pretty funny guy, if a little strange in his humour. You found his conspiracy theory that Professor Mei is actually some kind of loan shark to be very entertaining, even if you had to shut it down.

But the greatest part of this development for you was that it felt like after so many years of dealing with students that held no passion for the field, you had finally made a breakthrough. Sure, the possibility that he was only doing all of this to butter you up for a huge favour still hung over your head, but for now, he was applying himself, he was interested in the material, and at the end of the day, you were accomplishing what you set out to do as an educator.

You were sharing these sentiments with Makoto at the dinner table on the night after finals.  You told him how Satoru was among the students who flocked to you after the exam to express their confidence in their knowledge. He smiled half-heartedly, absent-mindedly picking at his food. You paused your chatter and took note of the worsening dark circles under his eyes and his dry lips. You knew he hadn’t been sleeping well these past few weeks, he said it was something about work stressing him out and to not worry about it, but there’s been too many nights where you woke up to find him still at his desk around 3 am, and despite your attempts to soothe him by taking on some of his chores and  the stress seemed to be affecting his eating habits too.

Realizing that the air was now filled with silence, Makoto looked up from his plate to meet your examining eyes.

“I’m sorry, I was a little lost in thought. What were you saying?” he chuckled nervously.

“I stopped talking to look at your tired face. I said it before, but you need to take a break!” You reached out to squeeze his arm. He remained quiet. “I know! The semester is closing soon, we’ll take our time off for a week and go somewhere!” you excitedly suggested. “I heard Samoa is nice this time of year! Fiji is pretty good too but to get tickets at this point might be hard. I don’t’ want to stress you out any further maybe-”

You felt soft lips pressing against yours, Makoto’s warm hands cupping your cheeks. Your initial surprise melted away from his ever-gentle touch, reaching up to feel his hair. But when you tried to deepen the kiss, he pulled away, his eyes glassy.

“What’s this about?” you hummed, playing with his shirt collar. “Trying to tell me to be quiet?”

“I… I just love you a lot.” He smiled, pulling you into an embrace. “I love that I have someone who fusses over me like you do. I love you so much.”

“I love you too.” You kissed the crook of his neck. “You must be really worn out, honey. Let’s take a bath and go to bed.”

He hummed in response.

>>>>>>> 

Makoto was gone.

You woke up on a cold Saturday morning to find his side of the closet empty, a suitcase missing. His car was no longer in his spot in the garage. You called his phone, no answer. You texted; the messages refused to change to delivered. You called his parents, his friends, his job. Nobody knew where he was. You drove all over town to his favourite spots, still clad in your pyjamas, hoping someone would’ve seen him. It was only when you solemnly dragged yourself back to your house late in the evening that you found the note he left next to your laptop.

“Sorry. It’s for the best.”

The aftermath was rough. Food stopped being edible. You couldn’t sleep in your shared bedroom anymore. It was a good day if you had enough energy to brush your teeth. At least one of your friends made sure to check in on you daily, their comfort coming in the form of helping you with daily tasks and expressing their disdain for Makoto for doing this to you.  Lines like “He’s a vile idiot!”, “He doesn’t know what he’s throwing away!” and “he’s been horrible to you!” were on repeat whenever they came around, and at first, you wanted to believe it. But when the anger stage of grief finally dissipated, you couldn’t help but feel like this was more than a man throwing away his marriage just because. You tried to express this to your comforters, but you were met with talks about seeking counselling or how to deal with denial. But they weren’t there. They weren’t there that night when he gently expressed his love for you. They weren’t there whenever he bought you something simply because it reminded him of you. They weren’t there when he’d rub soothing circles into your back when you were stressed. It was you who was receiving his seemingly endless love for the past 10 years. That’s why it was you who lay awake at night, mind endlessly searching for a plausible explanation. And it was cruel, but sometimes on those sleepless nights you found yourself wishing that he disappeared because he was kidnapped or lost at sea and not because he had willingly left you behind. Maybe then you wouldn’t be haunted by the notion that this was somehow all your fault.

You returned to the faculty after two weeks. It was a temporary arrangement; you were to finish grading the last batch of finals and upload them to the system before you took another two weeks of your vacation leave.  You did your best to appear put together, but no amount of makeup and nice clothes could hide the hollowness in your eyes. None of your coworkers tried to offer any condolences, but you figured this was less due to kindness than it was due to the fact that it’s harder to say, “sorry about your husband abandoning you with no explanation!” without feeling awkward.  Thankfully, no one else really got the chance to speak with you further since you locked yourself in your office all day.

You were getting sick of seeing the same questions over and over again when you heard a knock on your door. Satoru’s snowy head peeked through the door.

“Prof?” he closed the door behind him. “What are you doing here?”

“I should be asking you that, Satoru.” You responded. “Classes don’t resume until next month. Why are you on campus?”

“Club stuff. Just finished.” He strolled towards your desk and pulled one of the chairs to sit. “I saw the lights in your office on my way back and since you haven’t been answering my texts and Mei said you weren’t well I just wanted to check on you.” You sighed.

“That’s sweet of you but you’re too young to be worried about your professor. You should be partying or something.” You half-smiled. He stared at your face, taking in your miserable appearance.

“What happened to you?” he asked, ignoring your comment. “You look like shit.”

You don’t even feel defensive because you knew it was true, but there was no way you were going to discuss your relationship problems with your decade- younger student, no matter how much you liked them.

“It’s nothing for you to be concerned about.” You said, your tone dismissive. “You should leave, I’m grading papers and you can’t-”

“He left you didn’t he? Your husband.”  You shot him a nasty glare. How did the hell did he know, and why did he think that this was an appropriate topic to discuss?

“I lied. Mei told me what was really going on. I’m sorry I just wanted to know if there’s anything I can do to help.”

You scoffed. “Well if you can tell me what would compel a man to ditch his wife right after telling her he loved her more than anything, that’d be a great fucking help.”

“Welll,” he started, his tone light. “Maybe he was actually an alien studying human companionship that finally collected enough data for his report! Or it could be that he was a government spy, and he got another assignment.” You rolled your eyes.  His imaginative yet terrible reasons were actually working to provide some kind of relief.

“Or,” he scooted closer to you. “Maybe a rich student from the Gojo family paid him $500,000 to leave you so he could have you all to himself.”

You whipped your head around to face him. He was smiling, gazing at you as if he was waiting for you to laugh. You feel a shiver run down your spine.

“That’s not funny, Satoru.”

“I’m not joking.” He sang. “Here, take a look for yourself.” He held up his phone to your face. A screenshot of bank transactions was on it. Makoto’s name and account was on the top of the list.

You stood up, bringing your hands to your face, your mind battling with the evidence before you.

“No… no… I don’t understand… my husband wouldn’t… he wouldn’t fucking sell me like some piece of furniture!” you looked over at Satoru, who had gotten up to lean on your desk, a pleased grin displayed on his face.

“I can’t lie to you; you sure know how to pick ‘em.” He shrugged. “He’s just as stubborn as you when it comes to accepting offers. I had to tell him I would kill you if he refused for him to finally accept the deal.” He laughed airily. “Not that I would ever do that, of course.”

It was like a punch to the gut. You collapse to your knees, clutching your chest. Against your will, your brain started putting the clues together. This was why Makoto was having trouble sleeping at night. This was why he held you so tightly the night before he left. Why his last message to you was an apology. Because of a demon you mistook for a troubled student. You could see the demon’s shoes near your knees.

“Why… why did you do this? Revenge? I helped you… you passed the course.” You spat out.

He bent down to your level, a hand resting on your shoulder. “Honestly, the original plan was to get back at you. I was gonna convince the entire university that we were fucking, so I started hanging around you as much as I could to fuel the rumors. I was even gonna film myself fucking you senseless and spread it to the faculty to get you fired!” His hand creeped up from your shoulder to the base of your neck. “But then I ended up falling for you. For real. Who wouldn’t? You’re perfect. So I settled for getting rid of your hubby instead! I’m not a guy who can be satisfied with just being the other man, you know~.”

You were frozen in place on the floor, tears spilling from your shocked face. You looked up at him, and he was still smiling, aquamarine eyes looking down at you as if he just gave you a cute confession, instead of the horrific admission that he was utterly deranged.

It took the feeling of his lips brushing against yours for you to regain enough sense to push him away, the force of it causing you to fall back on your ass. You crawled backwards and away from him.

“Don’t touch me!” you snarled.

He stayed crouched on the floor, looking at you like a lion would look at a wounded gazelle. “I mean, I wasn’t expecting you to be over the moon about this, but to see you like this... Hmmm…” he trailed off, as if in thought. You needed to get the fuck out of this office. This university. You needed to find your husband. As you slowly rose, he clapped his hands together, making you flinch.

“I got it!” he exclaimed. “You want to see him again, don’t you?” he rose and stalked towards you.  A hand was on your hip, another on your chin, tilting your face to meet his manic eyes.

“Let’s have some fun together,” he whispered. “If you’re good, I’ll give you his new number. That’ll cheer you up, right?”

Another fucking bribe. You wanted to kick him as hard as you could. You wanted to gouge out those pretty eyes. You wanted to vomit. You wanted your husband. And this might be the only way to get him. You could get the police involved, but what could they possibly do? They probably wouldn’t even believe you. You had no other choice.

“What do you want me to do?”

You were on your knees near the desk, your clothes discarded, leaving you in your underwear. Satoru was standing in front of you, eyes blown wide in anticipation, mouth salivating. Your lips were swollen from the searing kiss he gave you when he was undressing you and you were sure that there were going to be bruises present on your neck from his affections.  You felt his fingers tap your cheek, a signal to hurry up.

“Go ahead, pretty thing.” He groaned. “Take it out.”

With shaky hands, you undid his belt buckle and unzipped his pants. His cock sprung free from its confines. You swallowed thickly. It was big, bigger than Makoto’s. You felt a hand pet your head. With a deep breath, you open your mouth you try to fit as much as you can without gagging.

You slowly bobbed your head along his length with your eyes squeezed shut. You tried to imagine it was someone else you were doing this to, someone who didn’t ruin your life, but Satoru’s babbling above you made it impossible to deny that it was him.

“Do you know how many times- fuck- I dreamed about this?” he hissed, hands running through your hair. “Thought about those pretty lips wrapped around my cock so much- hah- “ he suddenly gripped the sides of your head and started thrusting himself further down your throat, causing you to cry out in panic. It was too much, his pace too fast, choking you. You started smacking his thighs with your fists, tears clouding your vision.

“So sorry baby” he slurred, his voice thick and heavy. “it just feels so good I can’t- hah- stop! You’re so good f’me! Sosososogoood-"

He let out a shameless groan, and something salty and tangy and awful filled your throat. He released you and you immediately pulled back, gasping and spitting almost simultaneously. You sat on the back of your thighs as you tried to regain your breath. Satoru fell back onto your desk chair, body relaxed, face blissed out. You decided to cut his high short.

“I gave you want you wanted Satoru.” You spoke, breath still shaky. “Now give me what I want.”

He rose from the chair. “Actually, about that. I gave it some thought while I was kissing you.” He stalked closer and closer. “If I let you call him, your sweet voice might compel him to try and come back here. Can’t let that happen, then I’ll lose you.” He kneeled in front of you, gazing at your horrified face.  He pushed you onto your back, one hand pinning your arms above your head, the other toying with the hem of your panties.

You felt something in your chest snap.

“You lying son of a bitch!” you screeched, wriggling and thrashing in an attempt to get out of his grip.  He simply chuckled in response.

“Come now professor, I already told you. I’m not a guy who can live with being the other man.”  He smirked as he leaned forward to kiss your snarling lips.

“You said it yourself. A man is nothing without his principles, right?”

A/N: This is a repost from my previous blog @lnightmrs !

[sapphicandgraphic]

The Mary Celeste—Chapter 1

Synopsis: You’re a grad student who starts digging into a decades-old unsolved mystery for your thesis. When you uncover a dark conspiracy, you’re forced to enlist the help of your reluctant professor, Agatha Harkness. 

Chapter: 1/10 (The Fellowship)

Series Warnings: Academic suspense, historical intrigue, enemies to lovers, slow burn, eventual smut, fem reader, age difference, WLW

Chapter Warnings: Super hot Prof!Agatha 🥵, mentions of parental death

——————

You stared at the journal in your hands, fingers tracing the familiar frayed edges of your father’s handwriting. The ink was starting to fade, and the paper had yellowed with age, but the words still cut through you like knife. The last entry, dated a few days before the accident, had been scribbled hastily: “Find the manifest.”

You closed the journal with a decisive snap and tossed it onto your cluttered desk. You had been up all night, reading and re-reading your acceptance letter into the Archival Society, still not quite believing it. You had spent weeks agonizing over your fellowship application and waiting to hear back. Now it was finally secured.

Professor Franklin, the university’s most distinguished and legendary history teacher, selected a single grad student each semester to mentor. Being the archival fellow was an enormous honor that came with special privileges. You’d benefit from his personal knowledge and guidance. You’d also have access to several private libraries and collections within the department. You allowed yourself a brief, triumphant smile. Now, nothing could stop you from continuing your father’s work.

Standing up, you caught your reflection in the mirror across the room and stilled, struck by the familiar face peering back at you. You had inherited more than just your father’s insatiable curiosity. You favored him—gray eyes, blonde hair, mischevious smile—especially as you got older. You suddenly wished you could talk to him, tell him about the plan you had set in motion. The desire was so intense and visceral that you actually felt a physical ache in your chest. 

The sound of your phone buzzing interrupted your thoughts, and you glanced at the time. Your heart skipped a beat when you realized you were late for class—and not just any class. The American Folklore seminar was taught by none other than Professor Franklin. Grabbing your bag and throwing it over your shoulder, you shot out the door, hoping you wouldn’t be too late to sneak into the back of the lecture hall unnoticed. 

Your sneakers slapped against the pavement as you rushed across campus, the early fall morning sun casting long shadows. You had been at the university for a few weeks now, but it still felt like a maze—an endless labyrinth of stone buildings and echoing hallways. 

Outside the lecture hall, you paused to gather yourself, running a hand through your long wavy hair and straightening your Oxford button-down shirt. Then you opened the door and slipped inside. 

It was dark in the hall. When your eyes had adjusted, you spotted an empty seat a few rows down and began creeping toward it. You had almost reached your destination when your bag caught on someone’s books and they fell to the floor with a loud bang. 

You winced as several heads turned, and the professor’s voice paused. Glancing up at the lectern, you frowned in surprise. Instead of Professor Franklin, you saw a woman. She had long brown hair and dark blue eyes which were currently fixed on you.

“Sorry,” you said, voice cracking.

“By all means, make yourself comfortable,” she drawled, sounding bored. “We’ll wait.”

She pulled on a pair of reading glasses and glanced at a piece of paper on her dais, as if cross-referencing something. Then she called your first and last name, and you froze again like a deer in headlights. 

“This isn’t a trick question, pet,” she purred, and a few other students sniggered. “I have to ask for attendance.” 

“Present,” you said, cheeks flushing bright red. 

“Hmm.” She tapped the paper with one long finger and arched an eyebrow at you. “See me after class.” 

“Yes, Professor,” you said. 

Finally, after a few more agonizing seconds of silence in which you shuffled to the nearest available desk, she resumed her lecture. You pulled out a notebook and pen, slouching low in your seat.

“As I was saying,” she said, a tight, deadly smile lighting up her angular features. “Professor Franklin has taken a medical leave of absence.“

Your head snapped up, your mouth parting slightly in surprise. Was it your imagination, or did this woman’s dark gaze linger on you, as if gauging your reaction?

“My name is Dr. Agatha Harkness,” she continued. “Professor of Medieval Folklore, and I’ll be filling in for the rest of the semester.”   

Most of what came next—an overview of modifications to the syllabus, a walkthrough of expectations for research papers, office hours—you missed, unable to concentrate as you processed the bitterly disappointing news about Professor Franklin. 

He had been your golden ticket, a guaranteed ally in the critical research you had planned over the coming months. Without him, everything hung in the balance. You needed to regroup, strategize, figure out your next move.

Before you knew it,  Dr. Harkness was dismissing the class. You stayed seated as the lights came on and everyone collected their belongings, exiting the hall en masse. Finally, it was just the two of you. 

“So,” she called softly, voice echoing in the empty room. “You’re the Archival Fellow.” 

You nodded, uncertain what to say. 

She removed the wire-framed reading glasses which were still perched on the end of her long nose.

“Come down here, pet,” she said finally. “Let me get a look at you.” 

You stood and descended the few steps until you were standing directly across the lectern from her. She leaned forward, mouth pursed in a thoughtful half-smile. You met her gaze evenly, trying not to feel intimidated. Agatha Harkness was strikingly beautiful. Her hawkish eyes were bright, predatory. When she licked her lips, you had the mad urge to kiss them…or to run for your life. 

“What happened to Professor Franklin?” You asked, hoping your voice didn’t sound as breathy as it felt. 

“That silly old fool.” She rolled her eyes, but her tone was surprisingly gentle when she spoke. “Overworked himself, no doubt. Something to do with his heart.” 

“Oh,” you said, a fresh wave of disappointment washing over you. It was difficult to determine the most diplomatic way to ask your next question. Luckily, Professor Harkness took pity on you. 

“Not to worry,” she said shrewdly, seeing straight through your thinly veiled concern. “I’ll be making myself available throughout the duration of your fellowship. I understand your thesis is focused on an early 20th century shipwreck?” 

“Not exactly,” you hedged. “It’s a ghost ship. The Mary Celeste.” 

Dr. Harkness’s hand stilled. For a brief moment, you could have sworn there was a flicker of genuine surprise, maybe even fear in her eyes. But just as quickly, it was gone.

“I see,” she snorted. “How mysterious.” 

You felt a ripple of irritation, but tamped it down. Clearly you had gotten off on the wrong foot with this woman. Taking a steadying breath, you decided to try a different approach. 

“For what it’s worth, I’m looking forward to working with you, Dr. Harkness,” you said, schooling your expression into something warm and animated. “Your expertise in folklore will provide such a valuable lens to my research.” 

“Oh, flattery,” Professor Harkness laughed, gathering up her papers. “Now I see why Franklin chose you, pretty thing with a pretty mouth.”

The smile slipped off your face, replaced by a deep flush of uncharacteristic shyness that you tried to pass off as outrage. 

“Nothing personal, pet,” she assured you, seemingly unfazed by your reaction. “But I operate a little differently than Franklin. You may have charmed the old man, but I’m not so easy to impress.” 

Her heels clicked sharply on the floor as she walked away from you. She had almost made it out the door by the time you found your voice. 

“I earned my right to be here,” you said, shaking with fury. “And I didn’t come this far just to be insulted by some professor whose name I’ve never even heard.” 

She stilled on the threshold and you held your breath, preparing for the backlash. But instead, Agatha hummed in approval.

“So,” she purred. “The fawn has fangs.”

Then, with a dark chuckle, she was gone. 

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[jiubilant]

"Close your eyes," says Drevis Neloren, his mild voice echoing through the small lecture-hall. He steps around the lectern. "Don't open them. Sit where you are, please, as still as you can."

Fifteen first-years, sitting sprawled or cross-legged on the floor, stare back at him. Unfortunate, thinks Drevis, that they'd dismembered half the benches for firewood last year—and unjust that the halls with surviving seats have been snatched up, for two semesters now, by Sergius. He resolves to take the matter up with Mirabelle. If he remembers.

"Eyes," he says again, milder still. "Every one of you—you too, er, whatsit. In the back. Thank you." He clears his throat. "Now, then."

He's given this speech more times than he can recollect—at the Conclave, first, and now in Winterhold's cold and barren halls. He always pauses here. His students shiver and shift. For a deliberate moment, he lets them sit and listen to the room: the hum of the magelights, their breathing, the muffled wail of the wind outside. That which is sensible. That which is real.

"What do you suppose," he says at last, with a smile they cannot see, "is the deadliest school of magic?"

He's met with the blushing silence of a roomful of clever youths—clever indeed, or they might have enrolled at the Conclave—reluctant to risk a less-than-clever answer. Whatsit-In-The-Back, a stout young man with a farmhand's suntanned nape, is the first to contribute a guess. "Destruction."

A few other first-years titter on instinct. Drevis clears his throat again, sternly, to silence them. "What's your name?"

The boy's face is flaming—but his peers, eyes still shut, can't see it. He answers with convincing nonchalance. "Onmund."

"Onmund," Drevis murmurs. "I'll forget a few times, Onmund, I'm sorry. Would you elaborate, please?"

"You can kill a man with a thunderbolt," says Onmund, committing with commendable stubbornness to his course; a useful quality in a mage, Drevis thinks. The boy will probably do well. "You can't kill him with an—an enchantment, or an illusion."

"You can't?"

"Enchantments are cast on things." Onmund's still a bit pink. "Not men. And illusions aren't real. So—destruction."

"Thank you, Onmund," says Drevis. A few young mouths open in protest. Before anyone can counter the claim in favor of dremoras unbound, or souls trapped, or apocryphal relatives transmuted into rice-pudding, he changes tack. "How many of you have cast an illusion? A shadow to startle your friend? Fall of stars for your little sister?"

A flurry of hands go up.

"Phantasms," says Drevis, shaking his head. "Tricks of the light, achieved through its transformation. Alteration, in other words, not illusion." As the hands sink, abashed, he smiles. "Are you all quite comfortable?"

Nods all around.

"Fortunate, isn't it," says Drevis, smiling still, "that we met in a room furnished with benches?"

He’s given this speech more times than he can recollect. It’s disconcerting, even so, to watch his students nod again.

"Open your eyes,” he says.

Fifteen first-years, sitting sprawled or cross-legged on the floor, blink down at the tiled stone. Then they stare. A few jerk backward or sideways, startled, and catch themselves with their hands.

He’ll never again cast on them without their knowledge—but it had to be done, just the once. They’ll never forget.

"An illusionist," he says, his voice echoing in the stunned silence of the room, "can make you find him charming. A good illusionist can induce you to believe that he's your childhood friend, or your mother, or the owner of your coinpurse. A master illusionist can convince you that you're a bird"—he pauses for the nervous laughter that he knows, through long experience, will come—"and compel you, consequently, to take flight from a balcony."

The laughter stops.

"You will not learn, this semester, to cast an illusion," says Drevis. "You will learn to ward your thoughts against suggestion, and compulsion, and to break even the strongest spell that seeks to steer you wrong. And for the first time in your lives," he adds, unsmiling, "you’ll know that you can trust your own mind—”

* * *

“—vis,” shouts a voice in his face. “Drevis. Drevis!”

Drevis Neloren, with an apologetic smile, reaches to brace himself on the lectern. He leans on empty air. Someone catches him, staggers, sinks with him into the snow.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles, “I forget what I was—where was I?” His ears ring. Snowflakes sting his face. His brow, after a moment’s baffled thought, furrows. “Where am—”

“Did it work?” A hand, rough and urgent, shakes him. “Drevis! Did you hit him?”

Drevis curls his hands, raking up two burning fistfuls of snow. Clarity seeps into him with the cold. He’s on the ground, he understands with slow bewilderment, in the College courtyard, and the Eye—

“He’s—Ancano,” he gasps at whoever’s holding him, “he’s still drawing from the Eye, I couldn’t reach—I thought—”

His head throbs as though it might burst. He grinds a sob of pain between his teeth.

“All right,” the gruff, familiar voice grumbles overhead. The hands that had caught him—thin and coarse, nails gnawed to the quick—half-lift him out of the snow. “Worth a try. Take a moment.”

He’s never liked Enthir, thinks Drevis, lolling his head on his colleague’s knee. It pricks his professional pride that he’s never seen through the man until today.

“Savos?” he rasps, squeezing his eyes shut. Searing spots like magefire dance across the dark.

“Uh—” Enthir sighs through his teeth. “Someone covered him up.”

He crooks his fingers in a shivering sign of prayer, willing himself not to be sick. The falling snow cools his brow. “I’ll—I’ll try again. In a moment.”

“Did your brain melt out your ears?” snaps Enthir, sounding more like himself. He calls across the quadrangle, raising his voice above the cries of prentices and gulls. “No mindspeech in this! No seemings, no sendings!”

A shout of assent echoes back. Drevis grits his teeth and sits up. He watches the quadrangle spin. He watches Faralda bend to confer with Mirabelle, who’s sitting white-faced and bruised on a chunk of fallen masonry, then stride out to call the milling, crying crowd of students to order: prentices, to Tolfdir! To me, adepts! Masters, to me!

Something sours in Enthir’s face. He stands.

“Don’t tell the bosun,” he says under his breath, nodding to Faralda, “but I think it’s high time to abandon ship.”

The snow gnaws Drevis’s hands. He feels beneath it, for a moment, the cool stone of the lecture-hall floor.

[farore05]

Group Project

(Hugo & Ivy crossover fic)

I love getting to work with you on this @themournfulwatcher 😍

The lunch hall of the Grand Necropolis echoed with the clatter of cutlery and conversation. Ivy balanced her tray in one hand and her necromancy textbook in the other, scanning for an empty seat and trying not to scowl.

The assignment had been a disaster.

She’d looked forward to it, really looked forward to it. A demonstration of rune-binding theory. Her chance to shine, to prove she wasn’t just another face in the Mourn Watch’s sea of robes. Maybe even earn a passing nod from Professor Volkarin. Or more.

As she sat down at an empty table next to a window she imagined it… Professor Volkarin leaning over her shoulder, his voice soft and warm as he traced a finger along her parchment, pointing out the parts she’d executed well. The parts she could improve. She’d look up at him, eyes wide, voice soft…

“Could you show me, Professor?” She’d bite her lip, flutter her eyelashes. And then…

Ivy caught herself, blinked hard, willing the blush down. Maker’s breath, she was spiraling again. She picked up her fork with a sigh, it didn’t even matter. None of it did because the assignment wasn’t solo. Professor Volkarin had insisted on partners.

And of course, the moment he said it, the rest of the students had snapped together like bones in a well-repaired skeleton. She panicked, trying to keep her voice steady as she asked one classmate after another but everyone was already paired. Already gone.

There was just one person left…. Hugo.

Of course it had to be him. Top of the class. Perfect posture. Perfect handwriting. Perfect face.

She stabbed her bread, imagining it was his stupidly symmetrical nose.

At the far end of the hall Ivy watched Hugo and Professor Volkarin walking side by side, the two of them cloaked in joyful conversation.

Professor Volkarin gave Hugo a brief, approving nod, his hand resting lightly on his shoulder. “If you continue at this pace, I’ll have no choice but to retire early and leave the lectern to you.”

Hugo ducked his head, color rising in his cheeks. “Hardly. I’m fortunate to have a capable mentor.”

Ivy’s stomach twisted. That blush should’ve been illegal. When the professor stepped away, Hugo’s smile vanished, replaced by something colder, sharper. He turned and caught her gaze before walking over.

“Room for one more?” he asked, already setting his tray down.

She glared.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Hugo prepared for everything.

He memorized lecture notes, rewrote sigils in seven different permutations, practiced incantations until his fingers cramped. He’d even drafted potential responses for the rare, impossible chance a professor might comment on his work.

But not this.

Not the warmth of Professor Volkarin’s laughter. Not the ease of walking beside him like a peer. Certainly not the gentle pressure of his ringed hand against his back.

“If you continue at this pace,” Professor Volkarin said, voice laced with kindness and admiration, “I’ll have no choice but to retire early and leave the lectern to you.”

Hugo’s breath caught. His normally sharp thoughts scattered like loose parchment in the wind.

Outwardly, his voice remained composed. “Hardly. I’m fortunate to have a capable mentor.” But the warmth rising to his cheeks gave him away. He kept his gaze fixed on the floor, silently willing his pulse to steady.

Professor Volkarin lingered for a moment longer. “Keep up the wonderful work, my boy,” he said with a polite smile, then turned away toward the faculty wing.

Hugo stood still.

His heart was hammering, and he hated that it was. This wasn’t a rune to decode or a problem to solve, this was feeling, and he didn’t know what to do with it.

… He should’ve prepared better.

Hugo turned toward the tables and there sat the black haired girl who still didn’t have a partner like him. Maker he always forgot her name… Iris? Sable? Whoever she was she was scowling at her bread like it had personally offended her. She looked up and their eyes met.

[k-aemi]

good girl.┊ scaramouche

PAIRING ┊ perv!scaramouche x innocent f!reader GENRE ┊ pure smut. WC ┊ 1.8k+ WARNINGS ┊ he’s a perv , panty stealing , corruption , dub-con(?) , praise(if you squint) , not proof-read, cussing , scara just being gross!!! , lowercase intended!! SYNOPSIS ┊ coming back from your college classes and hearing your roommate making little grunts and moans, calling out your name, thinking he was in pain—but turns out, it was more than that. A/N ┊ written by kam , hope you guys enjoy ! (melody helped with the process !) first fic.

"anything that needs to be clarified?" your professor asked as he finished writing the formula on the board, turning around to face the class in front of him as he rest his arms on the lectern. a still silence preforms in the room, as the only sounds heard can be from other students taking notes, pencil moving in motion on the wooden table. finishing up your notes, your professor had now dismissed the class, signifying that the lecture was now finally over. wanting to seek solace in your comfy dorm and avail yourself of well-deserved respite after a long day.

a groan falls from your mouth as you now exited the lecture hall, stretching out your arms while walking towards the direction of your humble abode, where you share the room with a long-known acquaintance, scaramouche. scara—for short is what you liked to call him. "ah, im hungry...ill just eat some instant ramen back at the dorms." you exclaimed. soon enough, you were now in front of your dorm, grabbing the keys from your pocket to unlock the wooden door that was in your way.

twisting and turning the knob, you entered your abode, then taking off and carelessly throwing your shoes with the other pairs of shoes that were lined up nice and neatly, too drained out from the lecture to really care about any mess you make right now. walking and passing by the other rooms, you had to pass your roomies to get to yours. which you had no problem at all doing, until you heard faint groans and grunts coming from the other side of the door. "n-ngh...uh...fuck...y/n.." falls out of scaras lips. and there you hear a thud coming from the room.

you knocked on his door "ah-? scara, are you okay? i heard a loud thud! did something happened? are you in pain?" you asked in concern, pressing an ear against the blue tinted door to make out what he would say next. "y-yeah im fine. just go away argh..." he sounded annoyed, did you perhaps bother him? you didnt mean to, all you wanted to do was figure out what had happened. you stopped your thoughts as he hear his footsteps approaching the door, seeing his shadow beneath the creak of the door, slowly and subtly retreating from the door, your gaze meets scaras purple orbs.

his irritated look gives it away and you immediately feel bad. "im sorry if i bothered you.." you muttered out quietly as he let out a scoff, walking towards the bathroom. your eyes follow his before sighing. turning to walk to your own bedroom, before the corner of your eyes spots something out of the ordinary from his room. his room was usually just filled with neutral colors like white, grey, and black, but you spotted a pink cloth on his black bedsheet. out of curiosity, you enter the room, going closer to the object before realizing what it was.

"what the..? my underwear?" you looked in confusion, why would your panties be in scaras room? observing the undergarments a bit more, you spot little wet patches on them. and a weird smell emitting from it...maybe...this could explain the reason why the quantity of your panties had reduced. so scara has been the one stealing them?! you had lost your trance of thoughts after hearing a door slam shut behind you, making you turn around, "well, well look who we have here, y/n. figured it out hm?" he said, followed by with a menacing laugh, it sent shiver done your spines, waiting for your response as he leaned against the door with his arms crossed, looking down at you with a shit eating grin.

"you perv! youve been stealing my underwear!" you gritted your teeth, absolutely disgusted with your roommate. "and? what of it. not my fault youre wearing those kinds of underwear. i really cant control it yknow?" he grinned at you as he retracted his arms and took a couple steps towards you. the sudden instinct made you grab your garments, and throw it up at his face, but the quick motherfucker he was, he caught it. "well that wasnt really nice now was it?" he said before bringing the used panties to his nose, inhaling the scent of the soft pink undies, the smell of his pre-cum and your heat mixed in together brought him to heaven. his face turning red, eyes having hearts in them now, and breathing uncontrollable.

the sight of him smelling your panties had you tensed, as your eyes lowered to see such a noticeable bulge forming down. saliva forming in your mouth, to which you had swallowed. "do you see what you do to me..? for you to find out like this is such a shame, but whatever, its nice you know i crave for you now. every single part of your body. so please, allow me to indulge in this exquisite pleasure that awaits me." he bit his lips in excitement, his hand, motioning to touch his bulge, palming and shifting it around to reduce the pain, his other hand, still holding onto the precious sacred panties up to his nose to whiff at to get off to.

"uh..erm.." your face gave a look of confusion and hesitation. sure scara was a handsome boy, you never thought he viewed you that way, but you always had the thought of what it was like to be in the act of intimacy. but still, you werent too sure about this. "oh c'mon, you didnt even let me finish, im pent up. i just need one release." he grinned as he stepped closer to you, kneeling down to your height to harshly cup your cheeks with one hand, planting his lips on yours, giving a sloppy kiss. you pressed a hand on his chest, trying to pry him away, as his other free hand grabbed your wrist to stop your resistance. your eyes were shut closed, but you can feel a smile forming out of him. soon, you gasped and your mouth was left agape, the perfect opportunity for scara to insert in his tongue, exploring your inside, tasting and savoring every nook and cranny.

little moans falling out of your mouth, this...it was all new to you, never knowing or feeling the touch of another man. let alone, this kind. your resistance has stopped, knowing your strength wasnt compared to his. he may seem small, but he sure was the strong one. scara pulled back, a string of saliva connected from his mouth to yours, both of the individual breathing heavily, trying to catch up each others breath. a sickening smile appeared on his face again. "on your knees, c'mon." he commanded. as he sat on his bed. eyeing down on you. you just stood there in silence, just trying to comprehend everything that was happening right now. first the stolen undies, he likes you, then kissed you. just what was going on.

scara let out an annoyed scoff as he ran out of patience, pulling your arm to put you down on your knees, your face landing onto his pelvis, face dangerously close to his crotch. "oh? excited too? well then ill let you indulge in what you want of course~" his voice sounded high, as he unzipped his pants, his length raised up, the tip hitting his cloth stomach. he was girthy, and veiny in the right places, his tip, a pretty pink mushroom. its like it was perfect. you stared at his cock, intimidated already. your trail of thoughts were lost as you soon felt scaras hand grab your wrist, forcing your hands to touch the base of his cock. out of shock, you tried removing your hand, but he kept it in place. "dont be shy, i know you want this too. now move." you eyed up at him, a gulp forming on your throat, as you felt gross doing this. slowly moving your hands up and down, feeling his veins and stiff cock.

"f-fuck...this feels way better than that damn panties of yours...i always imagined it as your hand stroking my cock. now i finally get the feel of it. youre so good." he threw his head back due to the pleasure, moaning at the way your hands gripped his cock so tightly. "ugh..." you let out a disgusted sigh, it felt so slimy, and the stench was already hurting your head. "ah-shit im out of patience, open your mouth." a hand was placed on your head as his other supported his balance to sit up. "what..? why.." you meekly respond back. "hurry up and just do as a i say." he gripped a handful of your hair locks and it made you wince. as you obliged and open your mouth, without warning, his cock is shoved into the small mouth of yours. you gagged, both of your hands placed on his thighs for leverage and support.

"shit, your mouth is even better..." he fucked your face thru it all, tears that were threatening to spill down to your cheeks from the pain you were trying to endure. soft little cries and whimpers come from your mouth, hoping it would signal him into slowing down a bit. "tis hwurt..plese...stuop.." you were slobbering on your words...you couldnt say anything, not when he was thrusting his hips into your mouth so harshly as he was pulling your hair along with it. "youre such a good girl...taking me so well." it was like your pleas fell on deaf ears, as he just kept thrusting. "breathe thru your nose baby." as if it would make anything better. it hurts. you were gagging like crazy. saliva coated everywhere on your mouth, even dripping down onto the floor, creating a wet mess.

his thrusts were harsh and it made your mouth sore, you dont know how long you could keep this up honestly. "f-fuck gonna cum, you gonna take it all like a good girl alrigh'?" his pace fastened, and it left your eyes crying a river now. tears trickling down to your cheek and to your chin, mixing in with the pool of saliva down on the floor. "ah-! fuck, fuck, fuck..!" with one last harsh thrust, the tip of his cock touching the deep parts of your throat as his cum gushed out, forcing you to take it all, as some of it spilled out. he rides out his high by stilling himself in your mouth, taking in your warmth, before finally pulling out. which had you coughing out, mouth all sore as you laid on the wooden floor. trying to catch up with your breath. little bits of scaras cum still lingered on the corners of your mouth. a laugh falls from his mouth as he enjoyed the sight he was viewing.

"this is just the beginning. im not done yet. now be a good little girl and get on the bed."

"but you said you just needed one release...?"

"I said im not done yet."

requests open!