#professor!isaac

The back rows housed those students who came purely because missing a lecture meant failing swathes of assignments. Asking for a copy of the re-typed lecture notes proved futile – hardly legible even in print, written in some half-formed shorthand that was almost certainly punishment for a lack of punctuality. For those already struggling to keep up, it was an academic death sentence. 

The middle of the hall was for those who kept up relatively well, by the professors' standards. These oft demonstrated the most promise in assignments, and were poised and ready for his irregular habit of asking questions in a lecture format, as opposed to waiting for the seminar. 

The front row, if not sparsely populated by those who arrived too late for their regular seat, was reserved for those who attended purely to spectate the youngest associate professor on campus. At just 28, Professor Night had beaten the previous record by five years at least, and was, in his younger age, undeniably a sight to behold. 

You found yourself at home on the second row. As if that did anything to mark you as different to the admirers before you.

Summer term made for a particularly fierce struggle for front-row seating. The tailored suit blazer he usually wore was abandoned long before reaching the lecture hall each day, and, if you the spectators, were lucky, so too was the tie. This particular day, being well into the midst of the most oppressive heatwave in the last three years, marked the first occasion on which the first two buttons of his pressed shirt were abandoned, too. It felt Victorian, really, to have had to cross your legs beneath the cramped desks at the suggestion of a clavicle. Thankfully, the steady dishevelment of his hair made it feel marginally less puritanical, only marginally, as lithe, splayed fingers pushed the defiant curls back from his forehead as they sprang forth from their gel in the humidity. 

The old building did nothing to make the heat any better. Cramped as you all were in the hall, the old stone could only do so much to block out the sun, even this early in the day. For a moment, you swore that the hand that rose to brush his neck, dipping beneath the collar just enough to move the fabric further from his skin, was to wipe at a slow bead of sweat. If he hadn’t tossed his papers to the desk in defeat just moments afterwards, you may have disregarded it on the grounds of heat stroke. 

“Do not expect this to become a regular occurrence, but I am ending class there.” The glasses came off next, another piece of his usually staunch uniform discarded – how strange for an otherwise remarkable Thursday morning to quickly become the slow strip tease of your otherwise upright professor. “I urge you all to cool off. We will reconvene next week.” 

The order in which the hall emptied followed much the same regime as the seating arrangements. The back scuttling out first, followed by the far less hurried middle, and finally those too busy fawning to realise the class was over brought up the rear. Where you may have expected a heat-induced lethargy to have slowed the procession out the door, the usual order was disrupted, people springing from seats as if powered by motors. At least that may have explained the disgusting 8:30 temperature.

“Sir?” The honorific left your lips before you could think of a particularly good reason for it. Unlike your peers, you had not leapt at the chance to leave, even as Professor Night moved with significantly more haste than was usual for the end of his classes. He paused, regardless, papers halfway to hand, glasses tucked neatly into the front of the unbuttoned shirt. It was strange how strikingly he resembled a student, suddenly so undone in the way he was, even as his forehead creased in surprise, like a deer in headlights, that anyone could possibly want anything from him in conditions such as these. 

“Sir,” your hand lowered slowly, wetting your lips. “I was hoping that I might ask you some questions on the latest assignment? The one due next week?” 

The papers lowered to the desk, and once again the hand rose to his collar, following the same path as moments before. The hall emptied. 

For a moment, he only looked at you. It was undeniable that his eyes dipped, grazing over the edge of the camisole that had been your only defence against melting before you reached class. It wasn’t something you would typically wear to a lecture, dipping a little too low to be comfortable around some of the boys you shared class with, and barely made more modest by your thin overshirt. Against what you believed possible, your cheeks warmed further as his gaze lingered, longer than necessary to assess if you had violated the common-sense dress code. He relented at last, as the echo of students began to fade. 

“You?” He came to lean against the edge of the desk, arms folding across his chest as he did when he was pondering something. You wondered for a moment if in the quietening hall he could hear the inappropriate reaction your heart was having to being almost alone – the final stragglers easing bags onto their shoulders. “I’d assumed you’d finished it already.” 

“I have.” 

He paused again. “Then what exactly are you asking me for?” 

It was a good question. You hadn’t come to today’s class with the expectation of doing anything but admiring paying attention, and praying you were not picked on to answer on some obscure equation. You had never been picked, and you feared your good luck streak was waning thin. His brow raised at your hesitation. 

“I want to make sure I understood it correctly.” 

“You finished your last exam twenty minutes early.” It was not your imagination that placed the smirk on his face, the edge of his lip shifting. 

“And? That doesn’t mean I understood it all,” you countered.

“You scored 98%” 

You tried not to look too pleased with yourself. “The missing two percent has been bothering me.” 

Your professor rarely laughed. Smiled, yes – when someone got something right. But laughing was reserved for much rarer occasions. You took his snicker as as good as you might get. 

“Most students would frame that grade,” he noted. 

“Most students didn’t lose marks only because they confused parasympathetic inhibition with reduced sinoatrial node automaticity.” 

His brow lifted slightly, “So you do know where you went wrong.” 

“I know where you said I went wrong,” you clarified. This earned you a sharper look, yet the smirk remained. The lecture hall had emptied entirely now, the fluorescent lights humming softly overhead. 

“You sound as if you disagree?” 

It didn’t take a year’s worth of classes with him to know that what you were entering was dangerous territory. 

“I think,” you said carefully as you stood, only now starting to slide your notes back into your bag, “that my answer was physiologically defensible.” 

He shifted more of his weight onto the desk behind him, a leg crossing over the other as his arms unfolded, hands coming to rest against the edge of the wood. Really, they did look far too pretty to belong to a teacher, of all people.

You paused over one textbook before flipping it open, turning to the annotated page. “You said I oversimplified the cardiac regulation under stress conditions.” Your finger traced the margin beside your handwriting. “But transient vagal withdrawal does precede sympathetic activation in acute tachycardic response.”

There was no denying, as you glanced up again, that his eyes followed your own, flicking back up to your face. You were suddenly very aware that standing had exposed your choice of shorts. For a second, there was only the buzz of the lights. 

“You’ve been reading beyond the course material,” he said eventually. You couldn’t decide if that impressed him or bothered him. He had an uncanny ability to make anyone second-guess anything. In fact, you were sure that he could make a person reconsider whether their name was actually what it was at the time of introduction, if in the right mood for it. “You realise,” he said, hand outstretched for what you assumed to be your textbook – you stepped down to hand it to him accordingly, “that most doctoral candidates wouldn’t challenge me this confidently.”

Heat climbed your throat despite yourself. “Maybe they should.” He paused halfway to unfolding his glasses, eyes holding your own. “I mean, in the interest of academic development, of course.” 

He hummed at that, resting the frames against his nose at last and glancing over your pages. It somehow felt all the more exposing when your work was not in essay format, not to mention being stood so close as he dissected it – for you were sure that that was what he was doing. Subjecting your ideas to his scalpel as he did so many others. 

A real smile threatened at the edge of his mouth before he suppressed it again. Nevertheless, the movement pulled your attention for half a second too long. 

“You’re still wrong, by the way,” he said calmly.

You exhaled a soft laugh. “I was wondering how long you’d let me think otherwise.”

“The autonomic response wasn’t the issue.” He closed the notebook, handing it back and letting it drop from his fingers. “Your mistake was assuming the heart behaves predictably under stress. Biology rarely respects clean models.”

The glasses were removed again, fingers folding over the arms as he tucked them away once more. “Come to my office tomorrow, does four pm work? I have a paper that would help with this, but right now I’m afraid I need to—”

“That works just fine.”

It was hardly a faculty secret that Professor Night was far from ordinary. Beyond being the youngest, the rhythmic ticking that followed him belied the truth that he was one of the most brilliant da Vinchis of the generation – those students lucky enough to study under him, to work more closely than the front rows, had all confirmed that the clockwork heart story was, in fact, true. And that the man, as young as he may be, was more prone to fits of irritation than the tenured lecturers he worked beside. Usually, it had been deduced, as a result of odd biological habits. If his several winter layers and now uncharacteristic summer fidgeting were anything to go by, an intolerance for thermoregulation appeared to be a symptom. 

“Tomorrow then?” 

“Tomorrow. Thank you, professor.” 

He only nodded. 

Professor Night’s office was at the farthest end of the corridor, the blind on the door always closed, adorned only with his brass ‘Dr. I Night, PhD’ name plaque and a neatly printed schedule relaying his permitted office hours. 

Friday, four pm, was not an allotted meeting time, you noted as you hovered, gathering the will to knock. Friday four pm was blocked out for independent research. Time that your professor was particularly protective of. 

It was well documented after all, that his second year lectures were part of his contract, and not a passion project. If he had it his way, he wouldn’t bother himself with students at all outside of his select doctoral cohort. 

“Are you going to continue hovering?” 

His voice broke through your thoughts, muffled through the door, but clear enough for you to realise he had likely been aware you had arrived five minutes early, and had stood resolutely since. 

You weren’t sure why you expected the door to creak as you pushed it open, but it didn’t, sliding open almost too quickly for you to assert in your balance again, your foot rushing to catch you before you ended up face down, arse up on his office floor. 

You cleared your throat awkwardly as he glanced up, pen paused over paper. “Sorry, I wasn’t sure I had the right time, your schedule—“ 

“You have the right time.” His smile returned. The one that dimpled his cheeks just enough to lean endearing without being over eager. “Early, but correct.” He stopped you before you could form your question: “I could see your shadow beneath the door. Come, sit.” 

The solitary chair beside his desk cleared itself of its own accord, your eyes widening at the feat. The stacks of books drifted purposefully to join a pile behind him, the tomes having long since overflown the allotted shelves. 

For all his precision inside the classroom, Professor Night’s personal office was in a state of disarray. Not the type that came from a lack of care, but rather a great deal of it, if the self-opening drawer and flicked through files were anything to go by. The stacks of paper and leather-bound books littered every corner, but in a form of organised chaos. Everything, it seemed, had a place. Just one that only he could understand. 

Most importantly, it was cosy. You could almost envision yourself working in here regularly. Perched at the edge of that desk as he mumbled to himself in his thoughts— 

“Are you going to sit?” 

“I— yes. Sorry, sir.”

He flicked through the file deposited on his desk, drawing out a thin wad of paper, and pressing it across to you. The file returned itself, his fingers alone orchestrating the movement, curved at the first knuckles and wafted so carelessly, the digits relaxing as the drawer closed itself again. 

What else could his ability do, you wondered. How much could they lift? Is it like a hand? A pressure? Used on a person, could it be felt beyond the tug in whichever direction he dictated? Could you fight against it? Would you want to?

“You shocked me yesterday.” His voice once again dragged you from your own mind. “You’re an intelligent girl, I struggle to see how you could find this difficult.” 

You shifted in your seat, legs crossing again. His attention faltered briefly, fingertips pausing against the edge of the paper.

“I just want the best grade I can get.” Your offer was thin at best. And he could tell. He hesitated, watching you for a moment longer. Then, without a word, his fingers twitched again, a pen drifting lazily into his grasp. Your already uneasy smile faltered, watching, entranced. 

“You seem distracted today, what’s wrong?” 

“Hm?” Your attention refocused. “Oh, nothing, I’m fine.” He only continued staring, brow poised in an obvious display of disbelief. 

“Do I make you nervous?” 

The question caught you off guard. So too did the soft smile that accompanied it as he sat back in his chair. It was odd, really, how untouchable he seemed at the front of a lecture hall, yet this close, he was far more boyish. Almost 10 years your senior, he was at once too old for your late-night thoughts to be rational, but still young enough for the whole thing to be entirely plausible. You realised you were staring again. 

“How did you become a professor so young?” 

His smile held despite your deflection. “Apparently, designing your own heart at 10 years old constitutes the start of your research. Combine 18 years of ‘experience’ with completing a doctorate in two years, and you’re able to frustrate several greying distinguished professors.” 

“Two years?” 

He hummed affirmatively yet dismissively, as if to wave the feat off. “Not the quickest, one is still the record, I believe, but yes. Two.” 

“Impressive.” You nearly kicked yourself.

“I am glad you think so.” The snicker returned, perhaps a little brighter than yesterday, more at ease under the comfort of a fan to cool him. It rustled his hair a little as it oscillated, catching against the whisps that escaped the gel around his temples, dislodged, you assumed, by his glasses. The same glasses nestled against his head, flicked down now to his nose. This close, the lenses made his eyes just a little bigger, the lines that graced the edges of them more noticeable, the deep brown that much more susceptible to being lost in. 

“Why teach? If you don’t like it, I mean?” 

“Do I not?” 

“I hardly think it’s a secret.” 

“Was it your intention to play 20 questions with me today? I thought I was sacrificing my research time to help you better understand the course content.” 

You were correct. You were here outside of his office hours – and on his invitation, too. 

“I never asked you to,” you mused. “I could consult directly with my academic advisor if I’m disturbing you.” 

He scoffed, leaning forward again to the paper. “And risk the ruination of my greatest student's mind? I don’t think so.” 

His assessment gave you pause. 

“Greatest?” You’d had approximately six one-on-one conversations with Dr. Night since you began his class last autumn. Each in seminars, and bookended by him jumping from one student to the next to place them under his proverbial microscope. While each were catalogued away in your own memory, you had hardly considered him to have held you to much esteem in his own. 

“Do you know how many other students came close to your 98%?” he asked, flicking through the paragraphs in front of him. You shook your head. “Sixteen. Do you know what the next highest percentage was?” 

“No.” 

“84%” 

You suddenly felt incredibly giddy. 

“Ah, here it is,” he glanced back at you at last, turning the paper he had dug out to face you, tapping specifically to a paragraph on the second page. “Does that make it clearer?” 

You nodded slowly, eyes moving over the annotated paragraph while trying not to notice how near his hand rested beside yours. “I think so.” Though in truth, your attention had begun splitting itself rather inconveniently between the paper and the low timbre of his voice.

“You argued from the perspective of mechanism,” he explained, “when the question required you to account for variability.”

For a moment, you only studied the paragraph in silence. “I hate that you’re making sense.”

That earned you a quiet huff of amusement. “I should hope so. It would be concerning otherwise.”

You glanced up to find him watching you over the rim of his glasses again, expression unreadable save for the faintest hint of satisfaction. “So I was close?”

“Oh, dangerously.” His reply came smoothly. “Another paragraph and you might have convinced me.”

Your pulse stuttered unnecessarily. 

He sat back again, sliding the paper closer to your edge of his desk. “Take it, it will be of more use to you at the moment.” 

You accepted the paper carefully, smoothing the edge between your fingers more to steady yourself than anything else, moving to gather it with your notebook. “Thank you.”

He had picked up his pen again, already turned back to whatever it was he was working on before you had interrupted, and you stood. 

Your name came from his lips before you could reach the door again, and you turned far more quickly than necessary. “I could… continue to tutor you, if you wish. Given that you’re going to continue to read beyond the curriculum regardless, I may as well help to focus your efforts more directly, and save you from ending up in some antiquated quagmire.” 

“I– yes, Sir, that would be–” 

“Isaac will do just fine.” 

A strange flutter passed through you at the intimacy of it, your fingers tightening uselessly around your book. “Yes, Isaac. I would enjoy that.”

“Good—” He cleared his throat abruptly, as though the word had escaped him too easily. “Very well.”

He rose then and crossed the small office to instead open the door for you, one arm braced against the frame as you stepped past him. The angle forced you to duck slightly beneath it, close enough to catch the scent of sandalwood and vetiver. You felt positively woozy. 

“Oh, and I think this is best kept between us, for now at least,” he added lightly. “Lest I be accused of favouritism.”

That is exactly what it is, you thought, though you merely nodded, offering what you hoped was a composed smile before turning away.

The extra sway in your step was entirely coincidental. 

Given what you knew of prof Isaac, you had assumed his offer for tutoring would cover the key submission seasons, perhaps a twice-termly interest in your extra-curricular reading and some general pointers in the direction of other journals. What you had not anticipated was that, despite no formal alteration of his schedule, one hour every Friday at four pm would be dedicated almost entirely to you. That you would, over the four meetings thus far, come to know that Dr. Isaac Night only listened to classical music (he favoured Baroque), drank his coffee black and far too late into the day to promise good sleep, and drove a black 1980s Mercedes that had a surprisingly comfortable passenger seat (he was hardly going to let you walk home in the heat, after all). 

What you had dismissed previously as mere admiration was very obviously more. It was hard to deny when your Friday nights were now spent alleviating yourself of the frustration that had built over the hour (often more) spent beside him, a hand pressed to your mouth, imagined to be his, to muffle your sighs for the sake of your housemates. How easy it would be for his hand to reach beyond the desk’s edge, you thought, to dip lower as his eyes so often did, and settle between your thighs, to curl against you as they did when he exercised his ability, to replace your touch with his—

Your name, sharpened with stern repetition, brought you back quickly to the lecture hall. It was already emptying, bags being slung onto shoulders, books gathered, feet slowly shuffling out. You blinked out of your daydream, cheeks warm. 

“Can I speak to you for a moment? It won’t take long.” 

Isaac watched you expectantly with his usually collected smile. It was oddly sterile now, you realised, knowing him as you did – it was almost unsettling. 

“Is everything okay?” your classmates continued to shuffle out around you. Isaac only held your most recent paper aloft. Your stomach dropped. 

“Fine, but I wanted to ask you about something.” A few people murmured to themselves as they passed, a cautious side-eye offered your way as you stood awkwardly and closed the gap to his desk. 

“Could this not have waited until—” 

His sharp warning glance shut you up. “It won’t take long,” he flicked through the pages quickly, settling on one practically stained red, his pen strokes heavily adorning your own. “I knew you wouldn’t mind my work beside yours.” 

Isaac simply turned the page towards you, barely stepping back as you leaned against the desk to study it more closely. Reviewing his notes was not unlike deciphering code, the entire cohort was in agreement on that, and even a month under his tutelage did nothing to familiarise you with his manner of working. 

“They would have been graded sooner had I not been so distracted,” he hummed. You caught him wiping his glasses on his tie from the corner of your eye. “You complicated matters further with this.” 

“What is this, exactly?” you frowned, focusing on the page again. For all his scrawl, none of the instantly recognisable red X’s signified his usual disappointment. “Is it wrong?”

“No, no. The answer is correct,” Isaac bent beside you, one hand braced against the desk. Almost too close. You wondered if he could feel the warmth of your body as you could his, the structure of his shoulder brushing your own. “It is the method that alludes me. Tell me, where did you learn how to do this?” 

Your tongue darted over your lips, glancing to the corner of your vision to where his face practically hovered beside your own, his focus fixed intently on your work, as if blissfully unaffected by the proximity that had you once again at the mercy of his cologne. This close, would it linger against the fabric of your shirt for the rest of the day? You hoped so.

“I didn’t.” Your voice wavered unintentionally. “I mean, it just felt the best way to go about it, no?” 

Isaac paused for a moment longer, but made no effort to move. His eyes flicked over the page again, though you were sure that neither of you were reading it anymore. The muscle in his jaw shifted once. “Hm.” 

“Hm?” Was that all you got?

“Hm.” You risked the turn of your head enough to catch the dart of his eyes over the page once, then twice, fixating at last on the roll of his tongue against his cheek, the protrusion of the dexterous muscle. “I always knew you were impressive, but to surprise me? Very few people can do that.” 

“Is it a nice surprise?” 

Your breath brushed his cheek, and Isaac jolted. Small, imperceptible if you had not been standing so close, and yet he made no effort to move. Rather, his gaze landed on your lips. 

“Very much so.” 

Your breath caught. Isaac’s eyes flicked to yours briefly, as though searching for hesitation, for some indication he should stop. Whatever he found there made something in his expression soften.

Rather, he leaned closer.

You could have stopped it. You knew you should. Instead, your fingers curled against the edge of the desk, his breath feathered warm against your lips.

You felt the hesitation in him then – restraint stretched to its breaking point. His eyes had fallen half-shut now, his composure stripped away piece by piece by fraying discipline.

The slam of the lecture hall door startled Isaac into motion so abruptly it bordered on undignified. He reeled back at once, your own lungs demanding air so viciously it nearly had you staggering. You fixed at once on the back of the hall, two boys lumbering in the back rows as if searching for something, one coming up with a textbook clearly forgotten after class. Neither of them was particularly concerned by what had almost transpired. 

The same could not be said for the man beside you.

Isaac was already gathering his things with urgency, shoving loose papers into his satchel with little regard for their neatness. You did not think you had ever seen him move so quickly; not even the students occupying the back rows escaped his lectures with such efficiency.

“I think it would be best,” he muttered, voice tight as he flipped the leather flap shut, “if we postponed tomorrow’s session. I’ll—” he stopped abruptly. “We’ll revisit this another time. Good work on the paper.”

“Professor, wait—”

Calling after him was useless. Within moments, he was already halfway up the lecture hall steps, taking them two at a time. You cursed his ridiculously long legs. 

The heavy door slammed shut behind him.

When Isaac had walked out that day, he disappeared. You’d tried his office on three separate occasions, including the end of Friday. As usual, the blind remained drawn, but this time the door was locked – and there was no rhythmic ticking beyond it to suggest he was merely bluffing his absence.

That was why seeing him the following Monday, leaning against the back wall of the science offices with a cigarette in hand, caught you so completely off guard. 

“I didn’t know you smoked.” 

He startled, nearly coughing on the lung full of smoke he had just inhaled. He huffed it out awkwardly. 

“I very rarely do.” he flicked the building ash away, intent on watching it as it fell beside his shoes. “I find it helps with stress.” 

“Work?” 

“Something like that.” 

His voice was distracted, his attention fixed firmly on the cigarette between his fingers. He rolled it slowly, the movement pulling taut the tendons along the back of his hand.

“Your research?”

Your attempt to narrow it down earned only a scoff – light enough to almost pass for a laugh. 

“You.”

“Me?” 

He exhaled slowly again. “You’re a smart girl, don’t pretend otherwise.” It was almost condescending, laced with irritation as he brought the cigarette to his lips. 

You fumbled for words. It wasn’t hard to bring the memory of the other day to the front of your mind. You had been replaying it almost every hour for the last five days, trying to shake the ache in the pit of your stomach – to see it in a new light, one that didn’t mourn the fact you were so close to knowing what his lips felt like against your own. 

“Professor, I—“

“Do you think I don’t see it? Hm?” He glanced around then, pausing as a small gaggle of students filed past, his voice lowering. “The way you look at me? All the way through class. It’s enough to drive any man mad, and the other day—” he found himself unable to finish the thought, settling for another harsh drag instead.  

You swallowed hard against the tension in your throat. “Do you think it’s a problem?”

“I know it is a problem. Need I remind you I am your teacher.” 

“You’re the youngest on campus.”

“That does not make it better.” 

“I would argue that it is considerably more tolerable than if it were me and, say, Professor Richardson. Physiologically speaking.” 

Isaac visibly cringed at the thought of his nearing-70-year-old colleague, tossing the butt of his cigarette to the ground and grinding it beneath the toe of his shiny Oxford shoe. “Please do not make me picture that.” 

“It proves my point.” 

“It proves nothing,” he stressed. “I am your tutor, and I shouldn’t have allowed myself to see you so often, not one-on-one.” 

“So, you’re ending the tutoring?” 

“I didn’t say that.” His answer came too quickly, a stern glance offered from beneath his brows at the mere suggestion. It was a strange thing to watch his reason fight his appetite. You didn’t get where he was so quickly without constantly pursuing what you craved, after all, and now he seemed to be at odds with his habits for what might have been the first time.

That almost made you laugh. There was something deeply unfair about the severity with which he approached everything, including this. Especially this.

“You know,” you mused, “most men would simply admit they’re attracted to someone and spare themselves the philosophical crisis.” 

“This is not a game.” His expression darkened at once. “This cannot continue indefinitely.”

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

“Then, we seem to be at an impasse.” 

He barely reacted, his eyes not once leaving your own. 

“I can give you one last session,” he offered. You knew that tone. It was the one he used in seminars, relenting to a student begging for an extension on a submission. He was bargaining. But this time, you could hardly tell if it was with you or himself. 

“I want to show you something,” he continued, each word chosen too carefully. “But beyond that, we need to… reassess the arrangement.” 

It was as if he was trying to sound certain, cover himself with his professionalism. It was easy enough to see through the fact his fingers fidgeted in his pocket, twitchy without the comfort of his cigarette.

“In your office?” 

It would have been a disservice to yourself to pretend your stomach didn’t knot at the thought of it. That something inside you hadn’t already gone taut with anticipation. That the same heat didn’t bloom across your chest, multiplied ten fold from your first meeting. 

You knew he felt it too. It only made it worse. 

“I– Are you busy right now?” 

“Not with anything important.” 

His throat bobbed with the effort of swallowing, and his keys were fished from his pocket. “They’re at my apartment.” 

You almost laughed. “You think that’s smart?” 

“I know it isn’t.” For a second, he stayed there against the wall like he was still arguing with himself, jaw tight enough to ache. Without much other warning he set off walking with an intention that suggested you should follow. “But I’m sure we can be professional about it.” 

Isaac’s apartment was a little way off campus, away from the more student-esque districts. It was nice, suggestive of the nice wage the university must have offered him to keep him in their employ, and not have him dart off to the competition. 

He had stepped back upon opening the door for you, as silent as he had been on the drive over, letting you step beyond the threshold of what appeared initially to be an extension of his campus office. A similar pattern of chaos permeated each corner, this time, however, mixed with a series of chotskies you were sure were of his own design. You wondered if he at all knew how to switch off. 

“Did you make all of these?” Your bag dropped neatly to the floor beside his sofa, a cosy-looking thing, worn but not to the point of ragged. 

“Yes.” He sat back against the cushions, having locked the front door again and kicked off his shoes. You stood for a moment longer, turning slowly as if in some grand museum, when it caught your eye. A picture frame, a young girl, beaming happily from the mantlepiece beside yet another metal contraption. 

“She’s pretty,” you mused, stepping closer. Isaac knew what you were testing here, smart as he was, glancing up just barely from flicking though some large papers on his coffee table. 

“She’s my sister,” he confirmed. “Françoise.” 

You turned at that, an odd satisfaction settling in the pit of your stomach. He went quickly back to hunting for what he wanted, lips pressed together firmly the longer it took to find.

You paced slowly, attention darting between each of the small contraptions, set up in strange ways that you could hardly understand. 

“What does this one do?”

You stopped beside a particularly intricate mechanism, slightly larger than the others and positioned alone on a side table. Interlocking brass gears turned at uneven intervals beneath a lattice of thin steel rods, each movement feeding into the next with precise, deliberate clicks.

You reached forward innocently enough, a finger aiming to brush along the twisted metal, guided purely by curiosity.

That was when you felt it – the firm wrap of a hand around your wrist, stopping you entirely, holding you still without any obvious physical effort. Your eyes widened, breath catching at the steady pressure around your forearm.

Isaac’s hand was barely outstretched, still sat across the room, his gaze firm and unimpressed.

“Can you behave for a moment, please?”

Your mouth dried, a tragic idea forming. He had, after all, hidden from you for several days, avoided you like some child on a playground. If he wanted to be immature, why couldn’t you be. Your lips curled to disguise your shock.  “And if I don't?” 

Something darkened in his expression, the lines between his brows lingering but shifting, his tongue rolling over his lip slowly, preparing the answer. “Don’t push it.”

The pressure dissipated quickly, the sensation odd – there had been no warmth of skin to retract, simply the presence – some ghostly palm releasing you back to yourself. 

“I intended to bring these on Friday,” he muttered, already having gone back to his search, shuffling over a seat to work through another pile. “But, well…” 

“What are they exactly?” 

His hands stalled for only a fraction of a second before continuing. “The plans for my heart. I thought they might help with your final project.”

Something in your own chest tightened at the casualness of it.

“I’m sure they were here.” He exhaled quietly through his nose, shuffling another pile aside.

“You could just show me,” you said. “Your heart, I mean. If you can’t find the plans…”

That finally drew a reaction. His fingers slowed against the papers, then stopped altogether. The room suddenly felt much smaller. 

Isaac glanced at you, expression unreadable, though the tension in his jaw gave something away. “I don’t think that quite sticks to the promise of professionalism,” he muttered. Even so, he didn’t resume searching.

You only shrugged. “It saves me coming all this way for nothing.” 

His hesitation lasted for all of about two seconds before he reached for his tie, loosening the fabric incrementally until it hung loose from his collar.

“Fine.”

The word came quieter than you expected. He leaned forward to undo the first button of his shirt, then the next. The cushions shifted beneath him as he moved closer to the edge of the sofa.

“Come here, then.”

For a moment, you didn’t move. You could only watch the slow parting of fabric beneath his fingers, the glimpse of pale skin and the faint metallic framework set into the centre of his chest. Brass caught the low light in narrow flashes between the open edges of his shirt, mechanisms moving with soft, precise clicks beneath the steady rise and fall of his breathing.

You hadn’t realised you were staring until he glanced up at you. The look in his eyes snapped you out of it enough to finally cross the room.

Carefully, almost cautiously, you lowered yourself to kneel between his legs. The position alone sent heat rushing to your face, made worse by the way his knees shifted slightly apart to make room for you. Isaac inhaled sharply.

Your fingers hovered uncertainly before finally reaching forward. His actual hand curtailed your reach this time, his fingers wrapped tangibly around your wrist without squeezing. A warning, unlike the last, more to slow you than deter you entirely. He moved with you as you pressed forward, his lax grip steering you to the scarred skin beside the mechanism, free from the cage itself. It trailed from there, guided still by his palm, a tour guide as such, each component's name was announced at each small stop, low and soft beside your ear.

“It’s incredible.” Your voice was little more than a whisper as you allowed yourself to lean closer, weight shifting further onto your knees. You were too transfixed to recognise that your hand had found his thigh for balance, nor his shaky intake of breath. “You really designed this when you were just a child?” 

Isaac offered a quiet affirmative. You glanced up, too enraptured to have realised how close you had really become again. Neither of you moved. 

“Does it hurt?” 

“Not most of the time.” 

“Does it always tick this quickly?” 

“When you are around, yes.” 

You swallowed hard, heat rising at the overwhelming warmth that spread across your cheeks and prickled down your spine, exacerbated by the warmth of him beside you. Your fingers tightened against his thigh; his breath stuttered. 

“I should stop, shouldn’t I?” 

“Yes.” 

“Do you want me to?” 

“No.” 

The kiss landed wrong at first. Too fast. Your mouths collided clumsily, breath catching, his hand finding your cheeks with enough force to pull a startled sound from you. It was nothing like the composed precision he carried through the rest of his life. You could feel every fractured second of restraint fighting against instinct beneath it. He pulled back first, but only just enough to breathe.

This close, he looked almost angry about it.

“That,” he said quietly, voice roughened beyond recognition, “was a mistake.”

You could still feel his mouth against yours.

“Probably,” you whispered.

Your hand on his thigh drifted upwards as he leaned down to catch your lips again, tongue rolling over your own with an ease that betrayed his experience, finding where he stiffened, palming over the steadily straining fabric. His breath stuttered, rasping as you descended, trailing your mouth down the column of his throat. 

“W-we absolutely shouldn’t do this.” 

The button of his slacks popped open with the slightest effort, the zipper following suit. For all his eagerness to stop you earlier, there was little sign of the hum of his ability now, not as his hips lifted enough for you to pull the fabric free, to loose him, his flushed tip hitting his stomach. 

His weak protests trailed off into something unintelligible, soft whines taking their place at the wrap of your fingers around him, enveloping the base, catching in the mess of curls. His jaw clenched as you glance up, doe-eyed from beneath your lashes with the steady twist of your grip. 

“Fuck—” 

You gave into your own urges before considering his, you were so tired of navigating the whole thing on his terms, you thought, as you brought your mouth to him at last, the soft stroke of your tongue catching the heat of him, lapping sweetly at the mess he was making of himself, saline and sticky.  

The soft mewl was almost unbecoming of the man who usually commanded your classroom, his stomach tightening with each twitch in your palm. His eyes never once left yours, hooded, pupils blown so wide they were nearly entirely black. They followed the path of your tongue as it circled him, lapping softly at his slit, lips barely closing around him, suckling sweetly until he jerked against the roof of your mouth, pressing himself deeper, groaning at your startled hum around him until he met the back of your throat, the heaviness of him against your tongue halting your breath. 

He dragged you off as you hiccuped, nails digging crescents into the skin of his thigh, water brimming on your lashes. For a moment neither of you could properly breathe, your gentle grip still smoothing over the spit-slick skin. 

“Do you want me to stop, Prof—” 

“Don’t say that.” 

You only smiled, your cheek leaning to press against his thigh, a slow smile curling, emboldened by his steady undoing beneath your palm. “Would you rather I moaned it?” 

“Stop it.” 

“Professor—“ 

Something in him broke, his grip on your hair dipping until it grasped the base of your neck, tugging you back into him with little care for the fact the he could taste himself on your tongue. 

He kissed like a man possessed. Something besides his hands demanding you up towards him, settling you in his lap without effort, securing you against his chest with a near bruising grip. It was all too easy to give in, the startled huff of his name forced from your lungs as he pressed you into the couch beside him, barely allowing himself the distance required to tug at your clothes, stripping them unceremoniously.

There was nothing measured left in him now, not as his lips found your throat, teeth nipping at the skin not entirely intentionally. 

“Please tell me you have done this before?” It was rasped, punctuated by the drag of his lips across the juncture of your throat. 

“Yes.” 

“Thank God.” 

He spared no time working his hand between you, lithe fingers brushing the soaking wet folds, fumbling to find the ridges of your clit, savouring the harsh gasps as he dipped lower, pressing and curling against you for nothing besides satisfying his own desperation. 

“I’ve wanted to ruin you from the day you walked into my classroom—” each laboured word of confession came punctuated with the precise scissor of his fingers, “—So smart, so good. Fuck, made such a mess of myself all because of you.” 

You could do little more than whine, the broken syllables of his name barely discernable through the stuttered, hiccuping sighs, dragged from you with each pull against your walls. 

He pulled from you suddenly, hardly giving you enough time to lodge complaint before he pressed forward, filling you slowly – far slower than you imagined he desired to – inch by devastating inch, until his thighs pressed flush against your own. 

He sat back only enough to study you, his hair a mess, hanging limp in gel-cripsed ringlets by his temples as his thumbs spread your cunt for his observation. “That’s it, oh, good girl.” 

There was no control in the way he gave into your warmth, the fluttering squeeze around him driving him to the point of near madness as he pressed deeper still, barely giving himself the chance to withdraw with each roll of his hips. 

“Always knew you’d be so good for me.” His hands found yours, the white-kuckle grip alleviating from your hips in favour of pinning you to his sofa, the throw pillows crushed or tumbled to the floor in his haste, caging your hands in one of his so easily. “The– perfect– student—”

His reminder had you clenching around him, barely registering against the surge of him, the hand not dominating your own slipping between you again to find your clit, unrelenting as he played you so flippantly. 

His lips finding yours quietened you, swallowing the keening moans forced from your chest, drawn out by months of built-up frustration, inhibitions dissolving as he moved with bullying intent. 

“Gonna–” 

It was all you could manage, your fluttering cunt milking him, the gush of your slick making a mess of the fabric below you, body trembling and hips bucking away at the over stimulation as he fucked you through it, half-formed praises dripping from his lips. 

He came undone with a sob, spilling into you recklessly, the grip on your hands loosened, his fingers searching for anything to cling onto as he dropped forward, head pressed into the plush of your chest as he gasped, the keening rasp shaking with the effort as he collapsed, the rigidity of his body softening against yours, save for the cool metal in his chest. 

It somehow felt more strange for your fingers to settle in his hair, brushing the strands from his forehead, combing them back slowly so as not to tug. 

It took him a moment to collect himself before he drew back, hissing at the overstimulation. 

“Oh, shit,” his dispair came halfway between concern and exhilaration, eyes fixing on the slow seep of him from your cunt. “Are you–” 

“I’ll get a pill.” 

You moved to push yourself to sit, only for his hand to land against your shoulder. “Wait here.” 

He disappeared for a moment, reappearing with a washcloth, dampened and warm, pressing it diligently between your thighs. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t even think—”

“It’s okay, honestly.” The quiet that came between you was neither comfortable or awkward, an odd tension settling.“I don’t regret it,” you offered softly, watching the tension in his expression loosen by degrees.

“That doesn’t mean it should have happened.” 

“Do you regret it?” you pressed. His lips twitched faintly, humourless and tired all at once.

“No,” he admitted. “That’s the problem.”

The honesty of it settled warm beneath your ribs. “So,” you said carefully, unable to suppress the hope creeping into your voice, “you maybe want to see me again?”

“I will see you next Friday for your usual session,” he replied at once, the formality of it almost comical considering the state of both of you. Still, disappointment sat heavily against your diaphragm. You tried to hide it, but his eyes flicking across your face told you that you had failed. 

“Then,” he continued, quieter now as he bent to retrieve his shirt from the floor, shaking it out once before holding it toward you. The fabric still carried his warmth. He let it fall deliberately into your hands, fingers brushing yours for the briefest second. “So long as you graduate top of your class,” he said, gaze steady on yours, “I will see you again.”

You stared at him. It was impossible not to grin.

His expression shifted immediately in response, something dangerously fond threatening the corners of his mouth before he suppressed it again.

“You realise,” you said, pulling his shirt over yourself, “this is a wildly unethical motivational strategy?”

“And yet,” he replied smoothly, eyes dragging over you once before returning to your face, “I suspect it will be extremely effective.”

Lent term had been notably easier. Once his ridiculous notion that space was the solution to his infatuation, your old routine had settled again, and with it the strange comfort of restrained intimacy. You couldn’t touch him, but in the way he smiled seeing you sit in his lecture hall each Thursday morning, the barest inclination of his head, you saw the way he grinned as he handed you his shirt. In the subtle way his fingers would rest beside the hidden, agitated metal of his heart, you saw your fingers in his, tracing the fine mechanical details. 

Now, nearly one year later, as he sat as he had then, top buttons unfastened, sleeves bunched around his slender forearms, things almost felt normal. This time, however, he was noticeably more relaxed, lounging against the well-worn leather of his desk chair, feet propped up on the edge of his desk, glasses balanced on the tip of his nose. 

It was cruel how natural the routine now felt when there was so little time left for it.

“Explain why biological tissues are often anisotropic.”

“Mechanical properties depend on loading direction because of organised microstructures such as collagen fibers.” 

“Good.” He didn’t glance up from the flashcard between his fingers, instead tossing it to the desk beside him. 

“Why are hyperelastic constitutive models often preferred over linear elastic models for soft tissues?”

You hesitated for a moment, and his focus finally stretched beyond the paper before him, settling on you in a way that made your already blank mind squirm. “Soft tissues experience large nonlinear deformations that violate assumptions of linear elasticity?” 

One dark brow rose.

“Are you answering me or asking me?” 

“Both.” 

His lips pursed. You couldn't imagine the room could get any hotter. Even with the window thrown open and the small desk fan battling the stagnant humidity, the effect of his gaze was impossible to ignore. Heat burned at the base of your neck and settled low in your stomach.

“Answer.” 

“Good girl.” 

The flash card was tossed aside. 

“Isaac!” 

“You seem to respond better to affirmation.” You knew you did not imagine the lift at the edge of his lips. 

Your thighs squeezed more tightly as you shuffled in your chair. “You’re cruel.” 

“Cruel,” he repeated, “is wearing that shirt to this session.” His legs uncrossed and crossed again, the movement quick, almost restless as his hips shifted uncomfortably before he settled back into his chair. His attention had returned firmly to the flashcards. “It appears we are both suffering, today.” 

“We have been through these a hundred times, do we really have to do it again?” 

“Until you trust your own intelligence, yes.” He shuffled through a few of the cards, picking one at random. “Why is statistical significance insufficient for evaluating scientific importance?”

You knew he saw the way your tongue rolled against your cheek, the subtle fit eliciting nothing more than an expectant look. You huffed. “Statistical significance does not necessarily indicate practical, biological, or clinical relevance.”

“Good.” 

“Professor—” 

“Stop it.” 

“I didn’t do anything!” 

Isaac dropped the flashcards to his lap. He was frowning now, a deep crease setting between his brows. He pulled his glasses from his nose, tossing them beside the ‘satisfactory’ pile on his desk. It hadn’t taken you long to notice his sudden aversion to the word from your lips. Each use was corrected sternly. He now permitted his name only. Sir in the context of the classroom. 

You weren’t stupid. You knew ‘professor’ turned him on too much. 

“Need I remind you this is our final session?” 

“I’m well aware, but I think we have it.” You wet your lips. “Unless you do not trust my intelligence…” 

You don’t recall ever having seen his expression darken the way it did. He set the cards down on the table. Each movement was oddly calm, slow and precise. 

“After this – after your exams – there will be no more sessions.” 

There was something uneasy in the exchange. It wasn’t that he didn't trust you, you realised. It had never been that. You had always liked the weight of his attention when it settled on you, the satisfaction he took in your progress. What you still forgot, sometimes, was that he seemed to take the same pleasure in you.

You smiled softly. “You’re going to miss them.” 

“Of course I am.” For a moment, he looked almost vulnerable. More so now than when he had bared his heart to you. Literally. “I don’t think I have ever quite met a mind like yours before.”

“You’re talking as if I’m going to sit my exams and disappear.” Your laugh didn’t come across as brightly as you had hoped it would. 

You had unintentionally devoted many evenings to the finer details of Isaac’s ‘plan’, if it could be called anything as grand as that. The fact that there were no details at all was, perhaps, your largest concern. He had given you little to go on beyond his vague intent and a promise.

“You’re young. I’m not fool enough to consider that you might stick around here forever.” 

You scoffed. “And I can hardly imagine you will remain here for the rest of your career. You hate teaching.” 

He hummed, oddly amused as he slipped his feet from his desk, sitting forward more resolutely to fidget with the cards, tidying them, stacking them neatly, repeating. “I don’t mind it with certain people. But you’re deflecting from my point. You know what I mean.” 

You faltered. “We can carry on, if you like?” 

A flicker of guilt settled heavily in your chest. In your present situation, Isaac couldn't take you out to dinner or meet you for coffee. He couldn't pick you up from your doorstep or walk you home after dark. It frustrated him – he'd hinted at as much three weeks ago, the two of you sitting beneath the glow of a dim streetlamp a few streets from your rented house, sheltered inside his idling car while the monotonous summer rain drummed against the windscreen.

These sessions were all he could offer. They weren't proper. Not in the way he wanted. Not in the way you deserved.

“No, no, you’re right. You knew them all last week. Any more work risks tiring you out.” 

For a moment, neither of you spoke. The syncopated ticking threaded through the fan's monotonous hum. You stood before you could think better of it. He didn’t seem to register, continuing to stack the cards neatly, placing those you hesitated on at the front. 

“Isaac?” 

He hummed in way of response. 

Balanced against his shoulder, you stooped just low enough to kiss his cheek, your lips catching the edge of his mouth as you lingered a beat longer than you should have. He made no effort to dissuade you. Instead, he stilled, his fingers ceasing their fidgeting. 

“I couldn’t have done it without you.” 

“You could have.”

“I didn’t want to.” 

Then he huffed a quiet laugh, his smile gentler than you'd seen it all evening.

“Would you like me to drive you home?”

“Yes, please.” 

As was his usual routine, he pulled his keys from the top drawer and pressed them into your palm. You would head out first, slipping into the passenger seat while he closed down his office, joining you five minutes later.

He took longer this evening.

Nearly ten minutes had passed before you finally spotted him emerging from the far end of the science block. You straightened from where you had been slumped low in the seat, half-hidden from view. At this hour on a summer Friday, the car park sat almost empty, but habit had long since outlived necessity.

This time, he brought with him not only his bag (an old, worn leather satchel he had been using since he was in school himself – a gift from his sister), but your stacked flashcards, bundled neatly with a band, and a small black box. 

He slid into the driver's seat and deposited the flashcards and box carefully between you before dropping the satchel into the back. Then he plucked the keys from your lap, his fingers brushing the barest edge of your thigh.

You glanced at the box again.

“What's that?”

The engine turned over, the car reversing, quiet as he concentrated. For a moment, you thought he might ignore the question entirely.

“I got you something.” His grip tightened briefly on the steering wheel. “A good luck token, I suppose,” he continued, clearing his throat lightly. “Not that you need it.”

Your surprise lasted all of two seconds, a grin slowly splitting your cheeks. 

“May I?”

He nodded, and you plucked it from the console. The black box was simple enough, but as you opened the hinged lid, you felt the world had shifted. The locket hung elegantly against the black velvet, small but intricate. The elaborate filigree struck you as remarkably familiar, soft curls of metalwork draped across etched brass. 

“Isaac—” 

“I made it.” He cut you off before you could continue, his attention remaining fixed on the road ahead. By now, he could have driven this route blindfolded, whether to your house or the street he usually left you on, the journey had long since become instinct. “I had some spare material from maintenance.” 

“Maintenance?”

A faint smile touched his mouth. “From my heart.” 

Your breath caught. For a moment, you forgot how to breathe entirely.

Heat bloomed across your chest as your gaze snapped to him, but he still refused to look your way, hands steady on the wheel despite the confession he had delivered so casually.

“You're the only person on campus who's seen it,” he said quietly. “It's safe enough to wear, if you'd like to.”

You laughed softly, still staring at the locket resting in your palm.

“As if I'd consider anything else.”

You hadn’t realised where you were until he rolled to a stop. Tonight, he turned off the engine. Neither of you moved. 

“I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” he assured, turning at last to gaze at the chain between your fingers. 

“Will you put it on for me?” 

Isaac took it from you gently, unclasping it as you turned the best you could in the passenger seat, leaning back enough for him to reach around you carefully. His fingers brushed the skin of your neck, and you felt a tremor arc through your spine. You fought against it, and turned the pendant over between your fingers, tracing the delicate details with your thumb. 

“It’s beautiful.” 

His hands lingered for only a moment before retreating, settling once more on the steering wheel.

“I’m glad.”

Summer had stretched endlessly before you, only a few weeks ago. Now it felt frighteningly short. Soon, there would be exams, results, and applications. Soon, there would be a life beyond the familiar walls of campus, his office, this car. 

You closed your fingers around the locket.

“I'll wear it to every exam.”

His gaze drifted briefly to the windscreen. “I can believe it.” 

“And when I come back for graduation.” You smiled faintly. “You will be here for graduation, won't you?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” His words struck you harder than they should have. “Now, go on,” he added, gentler this time. “Your mind needs proper rest if it's going to perform.”

Your hand found his thigh before you could think better of it, settling just above his knee. Your thumb brushed over the bend of it, giving a small, absent squeeze.

“Thank you, Isaac.” 

“Goodnight, dove.”

You reached for the handle before you could talk yourself out of it – before the nickname he had bestowed you with could tug you into him again. 

He waited until you reached the end of the road before starting the engine.

You knew because you looked back before the corner to your street. You smiled, then you turned and walked home.

Neither of you said goodbye, yet somehow, it made it feel more like one.

You had never been someone to linger on hope. You wanted to be. To have the strength to take the word at face value and run with it. To trust anyone enough to believe that what they said was what they intended. 

You’d tried, of course. How else could you have excused each night spent dreaming of that small, comfortable apartment? Of your place amongst his books and designs, nested into his sofa cushions, and the way he might press a warm mug into your hands, only to nestle beside you. 

It was difficult to recall when your imagination switched so resolutely from scandal to sentiment. When the heady fantasies of his dark curls between your thighs had slipped away and been replaced by, or more accurately, accompanied by, him tucking you beneath his arm to read. The comforting cadence of his voice beneath your ear, punctuated by steady ticks. Love felt too ridiculous for a man you had yet to see beyond the confines of the intellectual. But your chest itched with something that felt strangely like its predecessor, and it was proving particularly troublesome to scratch. 

Even when the third week had passed without having heard from him. 

It clawed at you, your email inbox refreshed several times daily, the fear of your academic account closure looming as if an executioner, ready to sever the last remaining hope that what Isaac had said held true. 

You had never shared telephone numbers. You knew he had one despite his penchant for traditional media. He had mentioned on two occasions how his sister had a habit of calling him at odd hours just to catch him working when he should be resting, and the hypocrisy of her incessant sixth sense. 

Besides, how could you explain to your housemates or your family why your teacher was calling you? It had felt safer at the time. Now it felt like just another wall. More evidence to suggest that the affair, if you could even call it that had been a short-term thing.  

Why did it feel like a goodbye? 

It was a question that had stuck with you long past the car. Long past packing up your small room in your small rental and bundling down the small staircase with your housemates, each with far too large bags. Long past thumbing through the flashcards, still bundled up neatly (you had stopped at one as you flicked mindlessly, torn between storage and the trash, halted by his hand writing. ‘Stop second guessing yourself’, he had written. ‘You’re brilliant’. The card had been tucked inside your latest book, the rest tossed into the shabby cardboard box that housed the remnants of the last three years of your life.) 

There was the horrid weight of the realisation that Professor Night had come to realise the gravitas of your escapades. That his career, understandably, came first. And that you, an undergraduate living on little more than aspiration and a little audacity, may have little to add. 

But it didn’t feel right. It felt disingenuous as your fingers skirted the locket again – removed only to shower and sleep. 

Graduation was only weeks away. 

You swallowed roughly, thumbed the well-worn corner of the card peeking from the back of your novel, and urged your mind back to the page. 

The air on campus felt different that day. Hardly any time had passed at all, but the stifling waves of black gowns and caps gave it an altogether alien appearance. The clatter of heels on uneven cobbles, shutters of grandparents' cameras, the slow and steady procession of students from graduation hall to photo spots – it all made it feel as if the last three years had taken place somewhere entirely different. That this hadn’t been home at all. 

You tugged at the hem of your gown. Whoever had decided that heavy black cloaks were the ideal choice for mid-July graduations possessed a particularly cruel sense of humour. You had already wanted to tear yours from your shoulders three separate times before the procession had even begun, tired of the way the fabric clung to every inch of skin not already swaddled in your dress.

You hadn’t chosen it with him in mind, more interested in ticking off the dress-code requirements, but now, as you stood waiting for the call of your name, drowning out the steady humdrum of others, you heard Alex’s somewhere in the list you were left to wonder if he was there, and what he might think of the way the fabric clung to you. 

Was he sitting among the lecturers and supervisors who cared enough to witness the conferral of their students' degrees? He didn't seem the type. Then again, he'd promised. And if he kept this promise, perhaps the other one wasn't quite so impossible either. The thought settled warmly beside the locket nestled against your chest.

The line shuffled forward. You followed it automatically, resisting the urge to tug at the collar of your gown. 

Part of you still resented the fact that you'd done so well and finished top of your class. Your name had been plucked from the alphabetised procession and moved to the very end, alongside the handful of other students receiving awards in addition to their degrees. The sort of recognition that required a nomination. You had a suspicious feeling you knew exactly who to thank for that.

Your name surfaced at last, and between the shaking of hands, half-genuine congratulations, and the conferment of scroll and box, you’d had no time at all to glance out for your family, let alone the mass of black curls. It was funny, really. Three years of exhaustion and deadlines, and far too many late nights condensed into three seconds crossing a stage and an expensive piece of frameable paper – frame not included.

By the time you escaped outside, you'd endured enough photographs and teary-eyed hugs to last a lifetime. 

That is when you saw him. 

He was standing beneath the shade of an old stone building across the quad, one shoulder resting against the wall, his gaze drifting patiently from family to family as though searching for someone.

Despite the heat, he had kept his full suit on. It was far smarter than those you were accustomed to in class. Isaac always dressed meticulously; the leather of his shoes and belt never clashed, his shirts were always pressed, but this was different somehow. He was dressed entirely in black. The fit was flawless, as if it had been tailored precisely just for him. 

You could see him now in more suitable weather, donning the matching black wool coat you had dreamed of stealing all winter, or the black leather gloves tucked into its pocket. 

You swallowed thickly, gravitating to him before your family had the chance to capture you again. 

“You came.” 

He straightened when he saw you, pushing away from the wall and freeing his hands from his pockets. His ring caught the light as he did. 

“I told you I wouldn’t miss it.” He wasn’t exactly subtle, his gaze travelling down to your shoes and back again, his smile settling. “Congratulations on your prize, by the way.” 

“You wouldn’t have had anything to do with that, would you?” 

His smile deepened into a smirk. “Where have you got that idea?” 

“Call it intuition.” 

“You deserved it.” His tone left little room for argument. “That's all you need to know.”

You hummed in reluctant agreement. His attention drifted over you once more before settling on your chest.

“You’re still wearing it.” 

“I don’t take it off.” You reached instinctively for the necklace, fingers brushing over the now very well-polished brass. “I tell people I found it at an antiques stall.” 

He softened. You could tell he was about to say something, his lips parting before closing again, the hesitation holding him back. 

“You look good,” he settled on instead. A watered-down version of his original draft, you were sure. “My caps were never quite so cooperative with my hair.”

A laugh escaped you. “I would have paid to see it.”

“I've no doubt Françoise has the photographic evidence hidden somewhere.”

“Perhaps she'll show it to me one day.”

He didn’t answer. Something flickered across his expression, and a beat of silence passed between you. You could just about make out the steady ticking of his heart, a little quicker than perhaps normal. You blamed it on the heat. 

“I haven’t heard from you.” 

Isaac had an uncanny ability to leave you lightheaded with as little as a smile. But you knew not what possessed you to blurt out the commentary that had been running like a litany in the back of your mind. 

His hands found his pockets again. “I thought that would be for the best.” 

“Why?” 

“Give you space.” 

You could have screamed. “Not with this ag—“

“When are you going to realise I am nearly a decade older than you?” 

He fixed you with a pointed stare, said with such persistence that you were surprised to hear him wait for an answer. 

“When are you going to realise I don’t care?” You fought to keep your tone quiet, to avoid drawing attention. “Besides, you don’t look it.” 

He smiled. “I’m flattered, but that’s not my point.” 

“You said that if I finished at the top of the class you would see me again.”

“I didn’t expect things to go this far.” 

You weren’t sure in what way, but his words hurt. Cutting into you more severely than if he had produced a knife. 

“Wha—”

“I didn’t expect you to still want it,” he added firmly, sensing your slow withdrawal. 

“I’m not sure what else I could have done to convince you otherwise.” 

He paused at that. He couldn’t deny it. 

“Why give me the necklace if you thought it would amount to nothing?”

“Because I’m selfish. I wanted you to have a piece of me.” 

“And in return?” You hated how strained it sounded. “Do you still want this? Me?” 

“I do,” he swallowed with difficulty. “In more ways than I should.” 

“Then act like it. Please.” You had thought yourself above begging, but the sudden weight of the chain about your neck had you feeling far less yourself. “I’ve missed you. And you promised.” 

You recognised the falter of his usual reticence. 

“Okay,” he relented at last. 

You could have fallen over with the relief. “I’m staying in town tonight. Well, my family is.” 

“Oh?” His brow rose.  

“They think I am going out with some friends after dinner.”

“And are you?”

“You tell me.” 

He barely hesitated. “I’ll wait up.” 

“You barely sleep.” 

He grinned. You saw his fingers twitch in his pocket, then felt the steady invisible pressure of a hand squeezing your own.  

The sun was slowly setting when you reached his door. 

The slow, lazy drag of the summer’s day had grown gradually cooler, but it had done nothing to ease your fidgeting, trying your utmost to remain fixed in your seat through dinner, and avoid the urge to press your thighs together. 

It had been almost a year since you had stood in this hall, hovered as he unlocked the door, glancing awkwardly back as if you might have been followed. For a moment, you were the anxious girl standing outside of his office, not sure if you should knock or turn back. It was nearing nine pm, the final dregs of light painting the hall a pale gold. 

Your knuckles rose before you could talk yourself out of it. 

It took a moment for the door to open, long enough for you to hesitate, rocking on your heels. He was still in his suit – well, the remnants of it. The black shirt loosened at the throat, the cuffs rolled to his forearms again – the picture of dishevelment. 

There was a moment when you only looked at one another. Your stomach turned. 

“What does ‘doing this properly’ look like, then?” 

Isaac’s fingers closed around your hip, reaching for you before the final syllable had even faded. His lips found yours before you could voice your surprise, swallowing it whole. You bent instinctively into his desperation, melting back against the doorframe despite the hard bite of wood between your shoulder blades.

He dragged you against him as though another inch of distance might undo him entirely. Long fingers rooted into the curve of your lower back, curling around you to reach your lips. A groan caught in his throat, barely restrained, when your hands found the nape of his neck, “I’ll show you in the morning,” he murmured, the words rushed and uneven against your mouth. “Right now, I need you. Please.”

Breathless, lips already tingling from his ferocity, you could do little but nod. Your eyes flicked between his, the soft brown nearly swallowed entirely by black, darting restlessly from your mouth to your dress. His fingers curled against you again – “Jump.” 

You did so diligently, allowing him to settle your weight against him with an ease that was not entirely human, the grip on your thighs was for his own satisfaction over necessity. You did not comment on the fact. 

The rough press of his lips to yours silenced any quick wit or breathless expression, the twitch of two fingers swinging the door closed, the latch securing itself so that he might move with perfectly attuned muscle memory through the clutter of his flat.

How his feet found the threshold of his bedroom, you were unsure. You had hardly registered anything beside the roll of his tongue against yours and the heady assault of his cologne on your senses until his knees hit his mattress, dropping you sweetly against his sheets, pressing with some immediacy between your thighs as if it were his true home, a knee slotting perfectly between them, urging the fabric of your dress up your hips until it bunched at your waist. 

“I’ve wanted– needed you so bad—” Isaac’s lips left your own only briefly before securing themselves at your jaw, dragging a slow path against the column of your throat. “Let me see you, please?” 

You could do nothing but nod, breathless and dazed as he helped you sit, dragging at the zip of your dress, tugging the fabric up and over your head, making a further mess of your hair. Your bra came next, dextrous fingers flicking the clasp with an ease you chose not to dwell on as you shifted the straps from your shoulders. 

His lips found your skin again, urging you back down against the mattress. “Beautiful – utterly–” his words were muffled as he continued his descent, taking your breasts in his palms, pawing at them with a desperation you were unfamiliar with. His tongue swirled sweetly around the hardening bud, suckling more roughly within a breath, drawing steady gasps that barely resembled the attempts of his name. The scrape of your nails against his scalp only encouraged him, his tongue lathing over the skin, grasping more firmly as if you might drag him away. 

He moved only to continue his path lower, each languishing kiss growing hotter, wetter against your skin until he reached the boundary of your underwear. In his desperation, you half expected him to tug them from you, toss them aside as he had the day on the sofa. But he took his time, the fabric rolling down your thighs slowly, followed by his lips as if to leave an inch unattended would be classed as a federal crime. 

“Isaac, stop teasing.” 

He smirked, satisfaction evident at the instinctive writhe of your hips. He didn’t bother with a response, settling himself on his stomach and pressing your thighs up with splayed hands, as if he had been there a hundred times before. His fingers dug into the plush to hold you still, the possessive touch sending another shiver skimming through your nervous system.

In a moment of relief, he gave in to your collective want, head dipping enough to part your folds and sink his tongue between them. It was featherlight, as his fingers had been, passing just barely over the ridges of your swelling clit while anticipation left you breathless. 

“Professor, please!”

The odd perversion that gripped him with each utterance of that word came to your immediate satisfaction. He drove forward with more force, not so much brushing now but devouring, lapping obscenely at the steady gather of slick, pressed so intently against your cunt that in a more rational state of mind you may have worried about his suffocation. He was a passionate man, you reminded yourself as two cool fingers crooked themselves at your entrance, and that translated into the way he drank from you, suckling determinately. 

It seemed he was only emboldened by the grip you commanded on his curls and the sweet sighs loosened from your tongue by the work of his. Each swirl and soft growl reverberated through your nervous system until it burned, tension winding tighter and tighter inside you until the undulation of his fingers he'd so patiently sustained unravelled the release you'd spent twelve long months chasing, pulling it from the pit of your stomach. You shuddered, clutching at him as the last of your restraint dissolved.

You feared for a stifling moment that he might not relent, slipping his lithe fingers from your still-quivering walls only to replace them with his tongue, sinking into the mess he had made of you as if to clean it from you himself, gathering your wetness in the dip of his muscle shamelessly, drinking it down with imprudent slurps. 

You didn’t think your skin could burn any hotter. 

“If you’d let me–” he nearly panted, tongue rolling against his lips, savouring each drop, “–I would do that all night.” He crawled over you regardless, each brush of his lips lingered, dragging across your sweat-dampened skin while his now tousled hair dangled by his temples in messy half-ringlets, stuck at awkward angles from the rake of your fingers. 

It was not a terrible prospect, although you feared it might well result in your untimely demise – a succession of petites morts destined to finish off what little remained of your composure.

There were, you decided, far worse ways to go.

His lips, almost tacky with the remnants of you, found their place at your throat. It was here, you found, that it wasn’t hard to roll him – to tighten your thighs around his hips and push, just forcibly enough that he now lay beneath you, a wild grin on his face at your sudden authority. 

“I think you have had what you want for long enough, professor.” 

You knew you did not imagine the way he twitched beneath your thigh, the fabric of his trousers beneath you strained and slowly dampened with each subtle movement of your hips. You’d half a mind to lift yourself, to prevent ruining them further, had his grip not forced you against him as he sat up, hands tugging at your hips to leverage himself to find your lips again, demanding the drag of your clit over the cotton. 

He sat only long enough to strip off his shirt, the buttons coming undone with shaky fingers before the fabric was shoved aside and he could collapse back down. Each unsteady inhale stuttered in his chest as you made rough work of his belt buckle, then the button, then the zip, tugging the offending clothing away in a show of your own desperation. 

His straining cock was as pretty as you remembered it being, flushed against his stomach, a thick string of his precum webbed between his practically pulsing tip and his skin as you mounted him again, a thigh on either side of his. It was impossible to resist the urge to roll your hips, grinding unashamedly along the length of him, coating him, watching mesmerised as he slipped between your folds. 

“Go on then,” his voice almost veered on teasing, and would have were it not for the low hiss and tightening grip as if that might have reclaimed his waning self-control, “take what you want, dove.” 

After so many months, it took longer than you'd hoped to settle fully on him. He guided you with quiet patience as you sank down inch by careful inch, until at last you came to rest flush against him. His breath caught softly, and yours with it, a moment lingering before either of you dared to move. 

Each roll of your hips from there only garnered more momentum, ignoring the steady burn of your thighs and the building slick behind your knees, too far past the point of bliss to care. Growing slowly drunk on the slow glide of his member, your hands sought their balance where they could, fumbling between his chest and his thighs, letting him abuse that perfect spot that had you dazed when last you fucked, and had you dreaming of the curve of him for weeks after. 

It wasn’t long until you descended into grinding against him again, chasing your own release as your body tired. He sat deep and heavy within you, toying with your release as he forced your hips back and forth over his. You could half make out the slow drip of praise, his sweet girl, his perfect student, his dove – the procession of his possessiveness driving you closer still, your nails digging cresents into his thighs when his thumb found its mark, toying prettily with you until you shuddered, eyes rolling back, ribs collapsing on themselves as you hunched under the force of your orgasm, agonal breaths tearing from your throat with each pulse. 

Isaac never relented. His grip recentered at your waist, heels anchoring into the bed, he gave you no restbite, driving into you with a speed that forced the remaining air from your lungs. You hardly registered the warm metal beneath your fingertips as you slumped forward, clutching at his chest, urging your heart to calm itself if only to hear the desperate grunts beside your ear better as he came, pressing himself as deeply as he could, twitching ceaselessly against you as he filled you again until he stilled. 

The pressure at your waist softened as his hand glided over your back, drawing you into his chest until you lay comfortably against him, your cheek tucked into the curve of his shoulder. His fingers wandered lazily across your skin in thoughtless patterns while your breathing slowly steadied, the relentless ticking of his clockwork easing as he softened slowly between your thighs. He seemed to pay no mind to the steady leak of his spend as it ruined his sheets.

It was different this time. His lips brushed your hairline, not quite a kiss, but close enough that the warmth lingered. Instead, he rested his nose against the unruly strands of your hair, breathing slowly, as though regulating himself as much as he was you. He rolled you both only when he had his breath back, nestling you closer still. 

“Can you stay?” His hand ghosted the curve of your waist, his voice still hushed as if anything louder might wake him from some dream. He swallowed thickly, “I want you to stay.”

You tipped your chin just enough to look up at him. “I can stay.”

“And your family?”

“I'll tell them I stayed with a friend.”

A quiet hum escaped him. “And am I?”

“A friend?”

“Well…” His smile tugged faintly at one corner of his mouth. “I'm certainly not your professor anymore.”

“No,” you agreed. “You're not.”

His fingertips continued their slow journey along your side, tracing the slope of your ribs before settling once more at your hip, his hand resting there with quiet certainty. “So…”

“So?”

“I don't want to be your friend.”

“Oh?” You couldn't help the small laugh that escaped you.

“No.” He shook his head, the movement barely more than a breath, his nose very nearly brushing your own. “I want more than that. Much more.”

You searched his face for a moment, fighting back the dopey smily that threatened the corners of your lips. “My boyfriend, perhaps…”

His brow lifted.

“Wait.” A soft crease formed between your brows. “What's that face for?”

“Boyfriend?”

“You don't want to be?”

His laugh was warm, and you felt the vibrations of it through your palm. “I do.” He paused, his thumb absentmindedly brushing your hip. “Don't you think it sounds a little… childish?”

You drew back just enough to meet his eyes.

“Is there a rule once you turn twenty-nine that you can't be someone's boyfriend anymore?”

“Yes, actually.” His expression remained perfectly straight. “It's in the handbook.”

You could only scoff. “You're ridiculous.”

His grin broke out regardless. “Perhaps partner.”

“It sounds like we've co-authored a paper together.”

His hand squeezed your hip. “Maybe one day we will.”

You smiled, letting your forehead fall gently against his. “I'd like that.”

“I thought you might.”

You twisted under his arm, settling yourself on your stomach beside him. “This is part of doing it properly?” 

“Part of it,” he nodded, his fingers brushing lightly through your hair, smoothing it back from your face. “Breakfast tomorrow is another part.”

A quiet breath of a laugh left you. “And beyond that?”

He considered you for a moment. “Well,” he said at last, his thumb tracing a small, absent line at your temple, “you'll have to stay and find out.”

There was a part of you that felt positively giddy as you leaned down enough to kiss him, gentle and unhurried, finding the lingering taste of you against his lips. He took it as you meant it, if the gentle tug of you back against him was anything to go by. 

As if there was ever any doubt you would.

How her knee had been hiked up so that he might spread her wider, work deeper into her quivering cunt.

He didn’t put much thought into it. Not when his fingers curled into the crook of her knee, forcing it up higher, sitting back just enough to watch the ring of slick drool down his length to make a mess of his curls, paying little mind to how the desk might have bitten into her skin, pressed against the bone, bruising her with the force of it.

“P-professor, I–” 

He shushed her, muffling the weak attempts at a whine, a hand leaving its anchor on her hip to clamp firmly around her jaw. His heavy palm pressed against her parted lips, forcing them shut, directing her ragged breath through her nose so that her head swam. Starving the meagre thoughts of protest and demands for more. 

“Don’t–” his words came staggered, ragged with the exertion, “Can’t get caught, can we?” 

She shook her head awkwardly, glancing the best she could over her shoulder, her pupils as blown as he imagined his own were – the effect of the norepinephrine he knew to be coursing through her system as it did his. Her elevated heart rate evident beneath his palm, accelerating respiratory activity, increasing blood pressure. The endocrine responses stimulating the release of hormones – oxytocin, adrenaline, prolactin… 

She whined again, the muffled sound catching in her throat and cracking, a broken sob that only encouraged the tightening of his grip, dragging her head back with the effort. 

“Be good for me.” 

The hand slipped to her throat, caging but not pressing; he could never hurt her, after all, not his prized student. Instead, his lips took the place of his palm, swallowing each stuttered moan, his tongue lathing over hers, stifling each subsequent whine and huff of his name as she slowly collapsed beneath him, giving into him entirely. As much as he wanted to hear it, he would have to satisfy the urge another time. When he could make her his. When he could indulge her more thoroughly than this excuse of a tryst, her underwear strung limply from an ankle, each creak of wood a threat to their discovery. 

She tightened around him again, and he could feel the warm slick building against the back of her thigh — sweat from the exertion and the risk of what lay behind the locked door. 

“Fuck, need you to cum for me, dove. With me.” Each word struggled against the chase of her kiss, as if to break from him more than a millimetre was to suffocate. 

She managed little more than an ‘okay’ before she came apart, trembling, her arms buckling under the force of it, slipping on the papers beneath so that he alone supported her. His muscles demanded respite, each tightening and burning with the effort as he rutted desperately, giving into base urge and loosening his control, twitching, the heat in his stomach snapping as he filled her again. He pressed so deeply that he allowed himself to revel in the misplaced illusion that he might take root, that she might sit in his lecture hall round with him. His teacher’s pet.

The sheets had tangled in his legs when he awoke, sticking to the tacky sheen of his skin in his fuss. He sat up shakily, the strength drained from his arms despite his rest, disturbed rudely by the subconscious convulsions of his body and a betrayal not known since his dreadful teenage years. 

Isaac fell back against his sweat-damp pillow, cringing as his pyjamas peeled from the slick against his thigh.

How was he to survive her final year?

On the one hand, you couldn't regret it. How could you, when it had felt so right? When your body still remembered the release he brought you, and chased it even now? Tutoring had also become easier, somehow, as if it shattered the tension and cleared both of your minds.

However, three months away had been enough to leave you aching almost daily. Three months, and you had spent far more time thinking about him than you cared to admit. 

And now there were nine more ahead of you. 

Nine months of seeing him without touching him. Of working with him, studying for him, sitting across from him and pretending none of it mattered. Nine months of waiting for him to make good on his promise, if he intended to at all.

With the return of the colder weather came Professor Night's full suits. Gone were the tie-less shirts and rolled sleeves of summer, replaced by tailored blazers cut perfectly to his measurements, or, when winter reared its head, thick knits that made him look impossibly soft. More fabric, which by all logic should have helped. Instead, it only seemed to make matters worse. 

His hair had grown slightly over the summer, too, you noted. It was still slicked neatly back, holding its shape better without the humidity, though it now brushed a little lower at the nape of his neck. Everything else was exactly the same. The practised smile. The raised brow as he waited for conversations to die down. His gaze moved methodically from row to row, taking count, noting who had returned, who had continued the course, finding his favourites and identifying those he knew would lag.

Then his eyes settled on you. He stopped then. It was fleeting, but he lingered long enough to be noticeable. His gaze was like a sudden change in temperature, something cold settling down your spine despite the warmth of his irises, despite the fact you had yearned for it all summer long. It was enough to bring heat to your cheeks and force your attention down to the pages of your notebook – half-filled already with notes from last term's study sessions, a mess of black and red ink in differing handwriting. 

Keeping the secret was easy enough, you had found. You had little desire to share Isaac with anyone, and besides, there was very little to hide. You were simply student and teacher now. Closer, perhaps, than either of you ought to be, but nothing anyone could point to.

After his lapse, he had returned immediately to his meticulous self-control. From the moment he drove you home that evening, his cologne still lingering on your skin long after you stepped out of the car, he had not so much as kissed you. And it was not for want of trying.

You had brushed against him, lingered too long. Each time, he met your efforts with the same infuriating restraint, as though giving in once had only strengthened his resolve. 

You wondered as he started the lecture with his usual start-of-year welcome, if he had missed you half as much as you had him. If he had sat in that comfortable apartment, on that worn sofa, and slipped his hand beneath his waistband, wrapped his fingers around himself, and groaned your name into the pillows. If he had not satiated himself at all, but only fueled his urges further. If, perhaps, he would want to show you something else of his design before the year was over. 

Nine months was an awfully long time to wait for graduation, after all, and that was before accounting for the condition attached to it.

Finishing top of the class should be easy enough, you reasoned. You had managed it every year so far, after all. Besides, if Isaac had truly meant what he said – if his proposition had been more than a momentary lapse in judgment, you were certain he would look favourably upon your submissions. Not enough to arouse suspicion, of course. Just… enough. 

The thought should have troubled you more than it did. Instead, as he began outlining the year's course content, your attention drifted. He had already covered most of it with you in the previous term. His voice softened into a familiar murmur at the edge of your awareness, the words blurring together as your attention slipped, your eyes unfocusing. 

The only change made to Isaac’s door was his schedule. Certain classes had been moved around, and his office hours changed accordingly. What had not changed was Friday, four pm – still neatly allotted as independent research. Amusement escaped you with a huff of air as you brought your knuckles to the door with your usual knock, the one that irritated him slightly – or so he claimed. He was usually always smiling as he called you in. 

He was today, too. The door swung open of its own accord before you could press against the handle, a brow raised over the rim of his glasses, although his attention remained fixed on whatever he was writing. 

“Will you ever knock simply?” 

“How else would you know it’s me?” You tossed your bag beside his desk, settling immediately into your chair. 

“Perhaps the fact that you arrive every week at the same time?” 

“Can you let me have a little fun, please?” 

A dismissive flick of his fingers sent his books back to their shelves, each closing and slotting back neatly. “I take it you had a good summer?” 

You hummed. It was mischievous, you knew it was, but your smile formed regardless. “Did you miss me?” 

“Yes.” The speed of his answer surprised you, uttered without looking up from digging through his drawer. It settled warm against your chest, your cheeks heating as you arranged yourself more comfortably. 

It was practically an open invitation to push your luck. “How much?” 

He only looked at you. It was the first time since you had entered the room, you noted, his brow quirked in mild disapproval as he pressed the drawer shut and dropped a folder rather unceremoniously in front of you. 

“Did you do the reading I suggested?” 

“Obviously.” You thumbed through the sheets, slowing significantly the further you progressed through the diagrams. “Jesus, is this even undergraduate level?” 

“No.” You hated how he said it with a smile, far too gleeful, almost giddy at the prospect as he tugged the current offending article from your fingers, flicking through to his desired page. “But you can manage it.” 

“Manage doesn’t always mean understand, Isaac.” 

“You know what I mean.” There was a strange sense of relief in the fact that he still did not correct you to sir. “Might I suggest that you don’t go sharing this with others, it might overwhelm them.” 

“Why would I do that?” You had never once shared your session notes with anyone; you excused your regular appointments as solo study to those who asked, shutting yourself away to get work done before the weekend. Something unsettled itself in your stomach at his implication. 

He didn't reply right away; rather, he finished marking out several passages. “For these, I want you to evaluate the statistical validity.” He pulled another article towards himself, his pen going to work once again. “Then, I want you to critique the methodology. I want to have you thinking like a researcher by the end of the second term at the latest – preferably earlier, I want to get you in the lab before then.”

“Are you planning to run me ragged?” 

“I am planning to have you graduate at the top of your class.” It was murmured, disguised well as being in thought, but his pen stilled, eyes darting just barely in your general direction, but not quite finding a mark, returning to the nib of his pen instead. “I won’t be marking your final dissertation, remember.” 

“Would it be different if you were?” 

He didn’t answer. 

“I know you’ll be fine, but it’s always best to be prepared.” 

The response did nothing to settle you, your legs unfolding, sitting straighter as he leaned forward again to take the file.

“Now, for this one—” he pulled a paper from the very back, stapled neatly. He flicked to the conclusion and highlighted just three precise sentences “—I want you to argue against the paper. Give me an alternative explanation of the data. Find its limits.” He turned it back to you, closing it to the front page again. 

Your eyes widened. “Isaac, this is your paper.” 

He capped his pen, placing it precisely back in the holder on his desk. “I am well aware.”

“I can’t argue against your work.” You flicked through it regardless, your brow creasing as you flicked over numbers and equations that just barely made sense. 

He sat back in his chair. “Why not?” 

“Because—” 

“I didn’t think I made you nervous any more.” 

“You don’t.” 

“So, you don’t want to upset me?” 

“N-no, I—”

His sigh stopped you. “I need to know that you can handle this,” his voice was lower, now. “That you are not putting me on a pedestal because I am your teacher, or because I am anything else for that matter. You still need to be able to call me out, to argue with me,” he softened slightly, but his firmness remained. “Or this won’t work.” 

You swallowed thickly, the article dropping to join the rest of the stack. You hated how easy it was to hold his gaze. “And what is ‘this’ exactly?” 

He went quiet. 

“I think two weeks should be enough for you to work on this, but I expect the start of your argument next Friday. I can work through it with you to start with.” 

He slipped so easily back into the dutiful teacher with the tightening of his jaw, and stayed that way for the remainder of the hour. 

When you passed the fourth hour of untangling the meticulously knitted argument, or at the very least attempting to, your fingers ached. Your back did, too, hunched as you were beneath the desk lamp, tucked into some dark corner of the library with the science collection that few ventured to this early in the term, especially this late on a Friday evening. The two weeks offered were pitiful. You knew that. Professor Night knew that.  It was a test, and one you were determined to pass. 

You wondered then if perhaps he would relent again, and soften as he had at the end of last term. After all, he had still taken the session. He had diligently prepared your private curriculum; he had not corrected you when you used his name. He had said he missed you. But that did nothing to turn your mind away from the fact that he had seldom looked at you from the moment you had walked into the lecture hall two days prior, at least not for longer than a few minutes. 

The two weeks were a test indeed, and part of you wondered if you had been set up to fail. Isaac Night was nothing short of an equation, after all, and one that refused to come to a neat conclusion. 

“Burning the midnight oil?” 

You startled more forcibly than you would have liked to, the soft chuckle it garnered doing nothing for your embarrassment. The boy before you was vaguely familiar, his light eyes catching the dim light of the study lamp, its glow softening his features. You recognised him from the lecture hall, usually sat a few rows behind you, smart enough to have not been made a mockery of – yet, at least. 

“I have a couple of hours till that.” 

He huffed a soft laugh again. He seemed to glean the small evidence of your confusion. “I'm Alex, by the way.”

He held his hand out, and you failed to remember the last time you had seen someone offer a handshake outside of a job interview. It had a charm to it, in a ridiculous sort of way, when paired with his dopey grin. Harmless, you imagined, as you reached to entertain the offer, offering your name in return. 

“I know.” Your brow furrowed at his quick response. “Well, teacher’s pet, and all.’

Your blood ran cold. “What do you mean?” 

His head inclined marginally, gesturing to the spread of books that swallowed the desk. “No one works as hard for that class as you do. It’s week one, and you already look like it’s finals.” His attention lingered on one of the open textbooks, reading what he could of it upside down. “Besides, there are only so many times Professor Night can use your papers as an example before you start to gain a reputation.” 

You hadn’t been aware he did that.

“Is there anthing wrong with wanting to get ahead?” You weren’t sure where your hostility rooted itself, closing the book that held his attention cautiously.

“Not at all,” he mused, only seeming to relax more. “Actually, I want to do the same.” That explained his keeping of a similarly late hour, you noted. “I was hoping to speak to you after class the other day, but you seemed preoccupied– I was actually hoping that you might want to study together, two minds are usually better than one, right?” He nodded quickly to the collection you were hoping would help you find a way around Isaac’s iron-clad paper. 

You considered him for a moment. The sensible answer was no. Isaac’s warning still rang clear in your head. Whether his logic had been sound, you weren’t sure, but that made its echo all the louder. It was becoming clear, now that the haze of what had happened had passed, that he was entirely intent on maintaining the secret beyond the confines of his apartment, and to cover the nature of your tutoring altogether. But Alex was nice enough, you supposed. He could hardly infer much. It would be easy enough to pass Isaac's paper off as material for a final project.

“Yeah, sounds good.” 

“Next week? Perhaps a less horrible time?” 

You found yourself smiling despite yourself. “I’d like that.”

He smiled a moment longer. “I think it’s time I called it a night, if you want walking out?” Alex gestured roughly in the direction of the library's entrance. “It’s pretty dark out, and I—” 

It wasn’t difficult to pick up on the sudden rush of panic, his reasoning starting to spill from him in some odd attempt to prove himself anything other than a creep. 

“It’s probably for the best.” You offered as soft a smile as your tired body could muster, stretching your shoulders back and fighting against a grimace. “Thank you, Alex.”  

The brush of night air prickled your cheeks, and you drew your scarf closer around your neck, tucking your collar up against the early October chill awkwardly with your free hand, your small library of books balanced precariously in the crook of your elbow. 

“Let me take some.” Alex edged them from your grasp easily enough, managing the stack with marginally more ease. Your hands found the depths of your pockets, grateful for the modicum of warmth. 

You’d set off so distractedly, the fog of your breath curling briefly and catching the intermittent glow of the path lights as you chuckled at some small anecdote, that you didn’t spot the figure leaning against the wall of the science offices, black wool collar raised so that it brushed loosened curls, a cigarette pinched between steadily reddening fingertips. You missed how his inscrutable habit of staring had suddenly returned, trained precisely on your book carrier. 

This smoke curled slowly from his lips. 

Isaac had, indeed, picked apart your dissection. The two weeks had been a test. And you had passed by the skin of your teeth, and in large part thanks to your new study partner’s steady supply of sugar and habitual break-taking. Otherwise, you feared you’d still have been in that back corner of the library, collecting dust as thick as the shelves. 

You weren't too sure what had happened to your professor over the summer, but it seemed he had forgotten you were not yet a doctoral student, nor even a master's. You rubbed the sleep from your eyes for the third time that morning. 

“I come with reinforcements.” 

The sudden appearance of a take-out cup beside your notebook made you jump. Alex tossed a paper bag down with it – croissants, by the smell of it – and dropped his bag beside your own. He nodded in their general direction as he shucked his coat, “from that cafe.” 

“The one from last week?” 

“One and the same.” 

You groaned a soft thank you, wrapping your still-chilled fingers around the warm cardboard sleeve, blowing cautiously over the small hole. He only smiled, that silly half-grin that had grown somewhat endearing since that late Friday night. 

“Did you get the reading done for this week?” Alex’s voice dropped as Isaac turned up, his long black coat unbuttoned and billowing somewhat dramatically as he descended the stairs to the front, students moving naturally from the aisle to let him pass. He had grown bolder as of late, his coat removed and depositing itself on the hook, his bag emptying itself onto the lecturer's desk. The chatter almost always died away as soon as he did this. You wondered if he had started to do it for that very reason. He did so love to command a room, after all. 

You swallowed your mouthful – he’d remembered your order perfectly – and caught the stray droplet from your lip. “Barely. I skimmed half of it and prayed.”

His chuckle rose again, dimpling his cheek. “Why do I feel like you’ll still have understood more than half the room?” 

“Poorly placed idolisation?” 

He shook his head, lips parting before a stern ‘good morning’ cut him short. You took another sip, relenting one hand’s grip to pick up your pen, flexing your freshly thawed digits. Isaac had continued into the lecture as he always did, hardly leaving room to breathe or settle. To study under him was to keep up or fall behind. You oft wondered if he made things purposefully difficult to worm his way out of undergraduate courses next year. 

His gaze swept the room as he spoke, slides arranging themselves on the projector behind him, their gentle flicking the only accompaniment to his preamble about the week’s reading. Then he stopped. Only briefly, but long enough for you to notice. The fact that he had paused on you, on the matching coffee cups beside you, the flick of attention to your companion, may have helped, too. Long enough for something unreadable to cross his face before he turned back to the screen. 

You frowned. You were tired. Maybe you had imagined it. 

The first twenty minutes passed easily enough, your drink drained, and the pastries itched at your periphery. You’d skipped breakfast, more afraid of entering late than disturbing the lecture with a grumbling stomach. But lest you irritate Isaac further, you decided they were best left until after class. Alex seemed to be of the same mind. 

A scrap of white crossed the brown paper packet, a folded square, rough at the edges. You paused for a moment, oddly amused, as you opened it – ‘do you have any idea what he is talking about?’ 

You bit back a chuckle, wrist shifting to detail your response. 

“Alex?” 

Your heads both snapped up, and you felt him straighten beside you. Isaac looked unbelievably calm; the flash of whatever it was you had seen nigh on half an hour ago had faded entirely, an almost unsettling blank left in its place. His arms crossed, leaning back against his desk. 

“If two cells possess identical genomes, why might only one express a particular gene?"

You could almost hear the boy beside you swallow. “Different cell types.” 

To your horror, Isaac smirked. To anyone else, that would have been passed off as a smile, more importantly, as satisfaction. You knew otherwise; it had been right on a technicality, but far from what he was looking for. His attention turned, your name passing his lips instead. You don’t remember it ever sounding so sterile in his mouth before. 

You cleared your throat awkwardly. Isaac had never picked on you in class before. “Due to unique epigenetic regulation, which alters gene activity without changing the DNA sequence.” 

His smile turned more genuine. Almost… smug? 

“Alex, redeem yourself—” he was being cruel, more so than usual. “—If the genomes are identical and the difference is epigenetic, how is that expression pattern maintained through multiple rounds of cell division?”

Alex paused, the tension rolling from him, the shift in his seat felt through your own. "The cell inherits the same epigenetic marks, so it keeps expressing genes in the same way as the parent cell.” 

Isaac didn’t move his focus as he said your name again, sharply, his gaze locked unblinkingly on your friend. 

You swallowed thickly, “maintenance methyltransferases restore methylation after replication, and histone modifications are re-established to preserve the chromatin state.” 

Alex looked at you as if you had sprouted a second head. The language had been far beyond your undergraduate coursebooks, but that is what Isaac had wanted, and only you had known. There were murmurs behind you, rippling through the rows as Isaac smiled again. It wasn’t difficult to see what he was doing, directing his sadism the way he was. To anyone else, it may have been almost typical. He had directed attacks like that before to see who could keep up. Learning exercises, he called them. Torture was the word everyone else used for them. 

What Alex had said had been correct. In any other circumstance, he would have moved on. This wasn’t a learning exercise; it was a humiliation ritual. And one designed to show you off – his latest project – intentionally. 

Alex reached shakily for the coffee cup beside yours. 

The last half an hour passed with no more casualties. Only the uncomfortable quiet that came with everyone's increased focus, should their professor choose them next. 

You’re safe, you thought, as if any of them could hear you. You didn’t choose to bring me breakfast.

“No office hours this week—” he glanced just barely at you, and you knew he meant your office hour in particular “—I am at a conference this weekend.” It sank more firmly in your stomach than you had anticipated. “I shall see you all next week.” 

You struggled to reconcile Isaac’s aggressively routine schedule with the silence that met your knock. He had returned as planned that Monday, yet you had seldom seen him all week. 

The lamp in his office illuminated the small gap beneath the door and bled from the edges of the drawn blind. But no voice nor quiet rhythmic tick suggested he worked by it. You frowned, hand rising again in case your ears deceived you. Again, it was met with nothing. 

His behaviour had hardly been that of before the summer, when even if his disciplined hands had kept their distance, his eyes had been far less conservative. They dipped to the meagerly clad curves seeking respite from the summer heat and lingered far longer than they ought to. He only smirked when he had been caught, not once breaking the smooth flow of discussion, even when he had managed to render your own mind unfocused, save for the memory of what else of his had brushed so indulgently along your form. 

You had presumed the door would be locked, but it gave way under your chance attempt, clicking neatly open. It was empty, and had it not been for the abandoned pen tossed carelessly between the pages of an open book on his desk, you would have presumed it had been all day. That, and the thick black coat hung neatly with his scarf. You failed to control the urge to brush your fingers along it, the fabric heavy and expensive against your skin. Figures. 

Your bag fell into its usual spot, your body slumping similarly into your chair. The clock faithfully reported his lateness, ticking closer to five past the hour. It was only natural for your curiosity to get the better of you, skimming down past the clock to the abandoned book before you. He hadn’t even capped his pen, you noted, the nib dangling precariously over the fresh pages. 

Angling your head allowed you to read it more easily, but it didn't make it any clearer. It was almost a foreign language. Some of it you were quite sure was – Latin, you presumed, interspersed with perhaps Italian, awfully disjointed. Your fingers lifted the book before you could think better of it, peeking beneath the cover for any hint at the meaning of it all. 

You had seen several of Isaac’s drawings before, elaborate sketches of grand designs. But whatever strange creature now staring back at you, its hideously wide eyes formed of thin, studied strokes, was far unlike the rest. It held you there, stuck, your mouth drying out. 

“You let yourself in.” 

The book fell from your grip with a dull thud. “Professor! I–” He shut the door softly behind him, his attention fixed firmly on the book. “You left the door unlocked.” 

He hummed, halfway between a note of agreement and displeasure, stepping past you swiftly to scoop both the book and the drawing from your reach. The paper was tucked neatly into the back cover and tossed quickly into his top drawer. You heard the lock of it click shut. 

It was in his pause that you were able to really take him in. His tardiness was one thing, but his general state of dishevelment was entirely another. His usually neat hair was, in a word, unkempt, as if having been raked free by fingers, digging against the scalp, forcing the strands back from his forehead. What he still wore of his suit – the jacket having been abandoned at some point – was harshly tucked, rough at his waistline, as if replaced in a hurry. Isaac had spent weeks teaching you to look beyond things, to piece together that which others missed. 

And you were starting to wish he hadn’t. 

“I was starting to think you weren’t going to show.” It was offered awkwardly, the tightness in your throat making it worse. 

“I had something I needed to attend to, apologies.” He had turned almost immediately to his shelves, fingers raking over the spines of books until he settled on one, tugging it free. He flicked through it slowly without another word, lingering on a few pages before flicking to the next. You hadn’t felt so awkward since your first visit. Was it another teacher? It was easy enough for your mind to wander, the syncopated ticking from heart and clock growing irksome. Worse, was it another student? Your skin prickled. You swallowed against the agitation. 

He turned another page, snapped the book shut, and exchanged it for another. The sound made you start, the snap of pages, the thud of the leather, the scrape of the next. It forced your focus back to where his head bowed in concentration, a hand raking unwieldy curls back as they dropped once against his temples. 

“You’ve had a haircut,” you noted. It would have been considerate of the earth to open up and swallow you whole. 

“I have.”

You wet your lips, struggling in the silence again. He put the book back, only to pull out a third. 

“Okay, I’m not doing this.” 

The third book slammed shut, and for the first time in over two weeks, his focus was entirely on you and the hand that reached for your bag. 

“What do you mean?” 

You scoffed. How could he stand the tension? How could he work, maintain his clear mind, when so obviously preoccupied with avoiding you? The effort could not have been minimal, not in such a small space. 

His jaw set. 

“I get that you think we made a mistake. That’s fine, I suppose, but I would have thought that you, of all people, would be professional enough to not let it affect my tutoring.” 

“Might I point out that it is you that is leaving the session?” 

“Might I point out that you are the one refusing to look at me?” 

“Might I point out that you are the one who has been parading around with some boy since term began?”

You snorted derisively, choking on a laugh. “Excuse me?” 

Isaac’s jaw tightened again, the muscle working along his jaw, slender throat bobbing noticeably with the effort of swallowing whatever he was going to say before rethinking. He turned back to the book in his hand. 

“You mean Alex? You mean my classmate?” 

“I saw him walking you home. And then that little display in class.” 

“And that is grounds for what, exactly?” Your laugh was low and bitter. “You humiliated him last week on purpose— don’t scoff,” you warned lowly, watching as his lips curled. ‘Are you saying I slept with him because he carried some of my books? Bought me a drink? Do you think so little of me?” 

The way Isaac hesitated didn’t fill you with confidence. You recognised the unease on his face; you had seen it when you had knelt before him in his apartment, and uncertainty that was entirely at odds with the confidence he exuded from day to day. 

The way his voice wobbled unsettled you. 

“Was this just some… fantasy to you?” his jaw tightened, clutching to his composure again, and he looked away, toward the window, the floor, anywhere but you. “To sleep with a teacher? Tick it off of your bucket list? Have I been that stupid?”  

“What?” You were almost disgusted; perhaps you would have been had you not been struck by the sudden wetness of his eyes. “No! Stop turning this around on me. I know what you look like when you’ve just cum, Isaac. You’re not fooling me. What is it, hm? You can fuck your way through the cohort, but I have to stay oh-so pure for you, that it?” 

His expression hardened. “Keep your voice down.” 

“Why? Scared that the others will catch on?”

“No, because you should know that that is ridiculous.” 

“You taught me to study the evidence in front of me, read beneath it, and form my own conclusions. And I conclude that you’re full of bu—’ 

The door shuddered as your back landed against it, the syllables swallowed from your lips with the press of his own. They were desperate, and when you felt the roll of his tongue, you knew you could make no more arguments. Not when every thought seemed to dissolve the second he touched you.  You could still taste the remnants of his last cigarette. 

You shouldn’t have given in. You should have pushed him away. But in the end, despite yourself, this was what you had wanted all summer – the trace of his fingers against your cheeks, holding you to him intently, frustrated and demanding, but in the way he still stopped your head from colliding with the glass. Even now, angry as you were, there was something careful in the gesture. Something that made it infinitely harder to do anything but give in.

The realisation only made you angrier with yourself.

When he pulled away, you followed. His breath caught. For a second, neither of you moved. His hands remained where they were, his forehead nearly brushing yours, and the look on his face was somehow worse than the kiss itself, as though he was just as furious about this as you were.

“I had to shut you up.” You moved to scoff, but he stopped you. “You’re right, I have just…” He trailed off, swallowing thickly. His fingers remained on your cheeks, brushing against their sudden warmth absentmindedly. “But it wasn’t with anyone. I was– I had to–” his eyes flicked downwards briefly, “before I saw you.” 

Your eyes widened with the realisation, trying to bat the image from your mind. “Oh.” 

“Oh.” You could hear the embarrassment in his voice, the shaky confession far harder for him than he let on. His hands dropped at last, but moored themselves at your waist, reluctant to surrender their hold on you entirely again. 

You didn’t owe him an explanation. You had no duty to allay his pettiness nor the jealousy that had inspired it. It irritated you. But beneath the annoyance lurked something far more embarrassing: The fact that part of you was glad of it. Glad that he cared enough to be jealous. Glad that, for once, he seemed incapable of pretending otherwise.

“Alex and I have been studying together. That’s all.” 

Isaac didn’t press it further than that, even if you had expected him to. His thumb continued its steady rhythm against your hip. 

“I didn’t mean to snap, I’m sorry.” It felt instinctual, the way he leaned forward enough to ghost his lips along your hairline, so thoughtless in its tenderness, as though he had forgotten, for a moment, about the agreement in place as he left a warm kiss against the skin. Finally, he stepped back – pulled himself from the orbit he had been trying so desperately to avoid for the last month, its pull growing stronger day by day. 

“You can’t use me like a showpiece, Isaac,” you muttered softly. He almost looked ashamed for a moment. Almost. “And you cannot torment others just because they want to be my friend.” 

“I’d hardly call it—”

Your sharp look cut him off, softening as he muttered an agreement. “Is this going to work?” His lips formed a grim smile. “I think that depends on what this is.” 

You almost laughed, “You tell me.” 

“For a start, we need to trust each other, before we run one another into the ground.” The hand previously anchored to your side brushing habitually through his hair. “I stand by what I said. Once you graduate, I’ll do this properly.” 

Your chest warmed. “And between now and then?” 

“I’ll behave. You? Continue to be brilliant. There are only eight months left to go.” 

He checked his watch again.

Twenty minutes.

Twenty minutes before she appeared at his door with her ridiculous knock. Twenty minutes before she dropped into the chair opposite him, crossed her legs, and gradually shuffled closer without seeming to realise she was doing it. Twenty minutes before the fading trace of her perfume and that subtle layer of her invaded his space and turned his thoughts to fog.

Twenty minutes before he found himself fighting the urge to bury his face in the crook of her neck again and shut out the rest of the world.

A groan rumbled from his throat, sinking back low against the worn leather of his chair, hips shifting against the strain of his trousers, an awkward hand tugging at the fabric as if to flatten it out, and shoo away the proof of his perversion. 

He made a poor attempt at pressing the tension from between his brows, tossing his glasses to the desk to rub at his eye. His sister had always warned him against the habit, having read in some ridiculous gossip magazine back in school that pulling against his skin so roughly would give him wrinkles. He could hear her chastising him even now. 

He glanced at his watch again. Twenty minutes. 

He glanced at his pitiful self. He could tuck beneath the desk again. Or… 

The cubicle door shut more loudly than he anticipated, rattling in its frame as he fumbled with the lock with one hand, the other already tugging at the leather of his belt. 

Necessity, he thought. That was all. 

He shoved the fabric down far enough for it to hang from his hips and pressed his back awkwardly against the cool wall of the stall, if only to compensate for the alarming weakness in his knees. The surge of anxiety was unfamiliar, unwelcome, but hard enough to prevent the hasty bunching of his underwear, pushed down just enough to free himself. The strangely humid air did nothing in the way of relief as he jerked his palm roughly. 

He wasn’t here for pleasure. That he could only find with her, it seemed… Oh, oh for her to be here—

He choked on a gasp at the thought, fingers tightening as he throbbed, an involuntary buck of his hips betraying his intent, keening softly as he worked himself more feverishly, spreading the steady drool of his precum down his length and letting his head drop back against the phenolic division. 

Each soft whimper echoed torturously, seemingly magnifying itself with each unending reverberation. A trembling hand clamped over his lips, unsteady and ineffective, while his eyes squeezed shut against the ache steadily coiling in his stomach.

Still, the murmurs escaped. His right didn't falter as his left abandoned its futile attempt at silence and instead balled the fabric of his tie hastily. Instead, it fumbled for his tie, gathering the fabric into a tight wad and shoving it hastily between his teeth. The material quickly dampened with saliva, but it muffled the worst of the noise.

His lips throbbed, bitten raw and now exposed to the cool air. He worried the fabric between his teeth, trading one pain for another as his incisors ground relentlessly against the makeshift gag, the sting spreading from his mouth into the tight ache of his jaw.

Still, his hand worked. He could do nothing to distort that audible evidence of his transgressions – the erratic, indecent shluck of his palm over the skin, grip steadily tightening as if that might have contained the mess of slick that webbed between his knuckles with each pass over his straining tip. 

His heart joined the rapidly growing cacophony, increasing ticks fighting to make themselves known over the rush of blood against his ears. His brows knitted, bearing down ever harder on his tie, sweat clinging to his chest beneath his half-folded shirt, making the small cubicle that much more claustrophobic. His eyes shut against the depravity of it, as if imagining himself between her thighs again was any better. As if imagining her in his bed, knees pressed to her stomach and grasping at the bed sheets, made the present situation any less degrading. 

To be freshly 29, and fisting oneself in the public bathrooms like some perverted teenager. He wondered if it were a cruel joke, habits previously repressed dragging themselves to the surface. 

She was younger – did she have these same impulses still? Isaac shuddered, his stomach tightening painfully, cock twitching even against his clamped fist. Not even the sodden tie could contain the whimper that tore from this throat at the half-formed impressions of her surrendering to her need for him. Did she use her fingers? Curl them sweetly and imagine they were his? Did she rut against her pillow – fingers pressed against her tongue instead, to muffle each soft groan for her professor? Or was it a toy, a poor facsimile of him teasing her cunt so that she might imagine it was him she fluttered around?

His stomach tightened incrementally, his hips aiding his palm poorly, each slovenly stroke ill-timed, agitating the raw skin. Still, his teeth ground harder. The rough attempt of her name stuttered from restrained lips as he spilled miserably into his palm, the oozing mess seeping past clenched fingers to make a dappled mess of the floor, narrowly missing the polished toe of his shoe. 

Isaac dragged his hand over his face, brushing away the streaked remnants of his spit from his jaw. He glanced at his watch – one minute past four. 

Fuck.