Chapter Text
Class was over. Leonie was packing her books away slowly. The room was empty except for her and Professor Cabal the first time he spoke to her outside of class. He sat behind his desk, working in the notebook he always opened as soon as class was over. “Barrow, your uniform is disarranged. See to it.” She ducked her head to look. She did up the wayward button, slower than she had to. His hand tapped restlessly on the desk.
“Sorry, Herr Professor.”
“ ‘Sir’ is sufficient, Barrow.”
“Yes, Herr Professor, sir.” And she was away before he could correct her again. Success.
The next time it happened, she hadn’t planned it. He came across her in the halls. It was early - she was often at school early - and he was just arriving, judging by his bag and topcoat. He gave her a tight nod, saw something, and slowed, staring at her. She stopped as well. “Professor?”
“School policy clearly forbids lip paint.” And he took her chin in his hand and pulled a folded white handkerchief from his pocket. She only saw his eyes, blue and clear. With two hard swipes, left to right and right to left, he removed the offending slick of rose. Her lips tingled from the abrasion of the linen. “That’s ‘sir,’ Barrow.” He released her chin and left her. It took ten minutes for her heartbeat to slow.
But when she wore it the next day, lifting her chin proudly so he could see it, he pretended not to see.
***
Her eyes strayed from the front of the room where the stoichiometry notes were scribed in his careful, even hand. She had been watching him, of course. He was walking up and down between the rows of desks, his heels tapping out an even tempo on the floor. As he approached, heads bent to notes, the rate of scribbling increased. No-one wanted to be the first to attract his attention. Prof. Cabal’s reproofs were scathing and specific.
They didn’t sting, though, or at least they didn’t sting her. They were evenly distributed, and there was something impersonal in them. He didn’t hate you for being a threat to his authority, the way some lecturers did. That was strange, because he was young, and the young ones were usually the worst; they thought they had to prove something. Cabal didn’t try to prove anything at all.
She loved watching him. The catlike way he wiped his gloves of chalk residue. His mouth, that thinned in irritation or quirked in a passing instant of amusement. His eyes were a cool, clear blue, and they assessed and discarded. She noticed the sharp angle of his jaw, the tap of his leather-soled shoes on the classroom linoleum, the near-identical black suits. The ridiculous blue glasses he wore outdoors, which somehow didn’t look silly on him; did he have some sort of eye condition? She was fixated. And yet, she didn't want him to soften, to smile at her, to make shy jokes like some of the younger lecturers. She wanted all that focus on herself. She was so busy picturing what that might be like, that it took her several key seconds to realize that his steps had slowed and he was standing over her.
It was partly visible. His black-gloved hand slid the notepaper to the side, paused, and covered the transgression again. “After class, Barrow.”
Her cheeks were flaming, she knew. This was genuinely rather embarrassing.
Thirty agonizing minutes later she sat before the professorial desk; a sturdy object, made of well-varnished oak. Leonie’s textbook lay open on the desk between them.
“I hear that your behaviour in every other class is exemplary. Perhaps you should switch.” His gaze was uncommonly steady. He didn't blink as he paid out the words, one after another, like a man setting a net.
“No thank you, sir.”
“You are obviously capable of attending your classes on time, in your proper uniform…’ his eye lingered on the hem of her skirt, which was rolled four inches higher than it had been in her last class. “But you choose not to exercise those abilities here.” His voice was pitched quieter than she’d ever heard it. “You answered question four on last week's test with some trashy verse….”
“That was Dante, sir.”
“Exactly. But you knew the answer. Why did you do it?”
To get his attention, of course. To find herself here, alone with him.
“…And now,’ he said with distaste in his voice, “this.”
He prodded the textbook. She had altered it with pencil, and she had been in the process of inking it in when she was interrupted.
“Why did you deface the picture of Doctor Armstrong?”
It was a difficult question to answer. Doctor Armstrong was by far the youngest and most attractive chemist pictured in the text. That, and a certain strength of feature had made it relatively easy, by the pencilled addition of a severe black suit, a Homburg hat, and a few minor modifications to the shading, to change his appearance. Of course, it was the flamboyant banner encircling the caricature reading “Herr Doktor Professor Graf Jo-Johannes Caballesque” that made the whole thing difficult to pass off as a slip of the pencil. It was wretchedly silly.
“Would you call that defacement, Professor? I mean, sir? I thought it was an improvement.” And she sat there, heart in her throat, waiting for his reply.
“You watch me.”
“Sir?”
“You watch me. The other students avoid my eye. And when you watch me…”
Her face heated. She could feel the tide of blood flooding her chest, her neck, her cheeks, her forehead. How did he know? How could he know? That she watched the curl of his lip because it gave her a shiver? That she watched his hands competent on lab equipment and imagined them on her? That she memorized the crack of his voice across the classroom to remember at night, when she touched herself and whispered his name?
“You should transfer to a different class. It would not be questioned. I am known to be unpleasant, and your marks are excellent, despite your lack of enthusiasm.”
She didn’t know where she found the daring. She looked him dead in the eye, with as much meaning as she could, and said “I don’t want to transfer. Sir.”
“Stand up.” She stood facing him across his huge desk. “Eyes front.”
She found a spot directly in front of her - it was a capital ’S’ in the notes on the board - and her gaze was fixed on it, pinned to the spot. He was standing now. He walked around the desk to her. He felt tall; he was towering over her.
“Undo your shirt.” It snapped out of him, almost against his will.
She forgot to breathe out; she raised her hands to the top button and steadily, with only the faintest shaking, undid one button.
“Stop.” She did. He took a breath, spoke more quietly. “You should leave. Surely, it is clear to you that you should leave, walk down to the office, and request a transfer out of my class.” She didn’t give a reply. She didn’t move her eyes. She raised her hands to her chest and undid her shirt buttons, one after the other, until they were all undone. And with each button, it was as if everything else dropped away: her home, her worries, even the rest of the building. It was just her, blood pounding in her ears, a lightness growing in her head, and him, a little behind her where she couldn’t see him, but a heat and an energy radiating from him like the sun. His next question shocked her.
“Are you hoping to improve your grades?”
She was stung, furious. Rules forgotten, she whipped her head around and glared at him. He stood out of arm’s reach, but quite close, a guarded expression on his face. “Of course not! As if I had to get special favours for that!”
“No, you don’t.” And that seemed to relax him, a little. Something crept into his voice again. “Put your elbows on the desk.” He circled back in front of her, on the other side of the desk.
This was a dream. It could be, if it wasn't for his hand clenched tight beside his thigh. She leaned over slowly, from the waist, letting her open shirt gape down. He looked, his eyes lingering over her breasts. Her pulse tripped.
“Open your hands, palms up.”
She turned her palms up, open but not flat. A suppliant’s gesture. It felt archaic, an ancient slave’s obeisance.
Four crisp footfalls to the classroom door, and the sound of him locking it from the inside. She felt a thrill of discomfort as the heavy tumblers dropped home, and she suddenly felt the danger of her position. Alone, the school day over, the office emptying. He had told her, almost begged her to go. Did he have ten young women buried in a yard somewhere? He walked back towards her, working at something small he held in his hand, and she wondered if she should call it off, if it was too late to back out.
He put a key in her open palm. The door key, from his own keyring. He had put the power to unlock it, to go, in her hands. She relaxed even as he stepped back from her, away from the door so she could leave without approaching him. Was it also an ultimatum: take this, or leave it? He was waiting, she realized, for a sign. She closed her fingers over the key until it dug into her skin.
When he took two fast steps forward, put his gloved hand in her hair, and pulled her head back, she felt completely safe.
It brought her face to his, almost, and her lips were parted, ready for a kiss, for anything. But his lips were set in a line, and when he saw her looking at them, his eyebrows pulled together in a disapproving frown. She understood: bad girl, wanting to kiss her professor. He looked at her face, and then down; the strain of this position thrust her breasts out; she hoped he liked them. She shivered when they touched the rough coolness of the wood. He let her hair go, but she kept her head up, where he positioned her.
His fingertips were in the small of her back, forcing it down below the level of her hips. It made her spine curve deep, thrusting her rump in the air like an animal that wants to be mated. When she felt the cool leather of his touch sliding up the back of her thigh, she could have cried out with pleasure and suspense. Up, up her leg, the trail of sensation possessing her whole consciousness, but not between her thighs. She hardly had time to feel disappointed when he flipped her skirt over her back.
The air of the room felt cool on her bottom. She wondered if he could tell she was wet inside her drawers. And then his hand on her rear again, her thigh, squeezing and examining. What now? Oh god, what now?
“That will be all, Barrow.”
And just like that, it was over. She stood up, did up her blouse. He fixed the part in her hair. But something very not fixable had started inside her. When she left, she took his key. He's clever, he’ll get another. But this one is hers.