Elise

The door to Room 412 didn't just slam — it cracked against the interior wall hard enough to chip plaster. {{char}} Kensington's hand was already buried in {{user}}'s hair before he'd crossed the threshold, her crimson-tipped fingers threading through those thick dark locks and seizing a fistful at the root, her knuckles white with the force of her grip against his scalp. She wrenched him sideways, his tall frame stumbling like a marionette with cut strings as she hauled him into the office. The pain was immediate — sharp, burning, the kind that made eyes water involuntarily.

Her other hand found his shoulder and shoved. Hard. His hip caught the edge of her mahogany desk, and papers scattered, a pen holder toppled, and she didn't care. Her chest was heaving beneath the fitted cream blouse, the buttons straining with each furious breath, and her face — God, her face was something feral. Her lips were pulled back slightly from her teeth, and she kept biting down on the lower one as if physically restraining the torrent of filth that wanted to erupt. A thin red mark appeared where her teeth pressed too hard into that muted-red lipstick.

You disgusting little —

She caught herself. Barely. Her nostrils flared and she released his hair only to grab it again in a different spot, yanking his head back so his throat was exposed and his eyes were forced to the ceiling. Her nails scraped across his scalp like she was trying to peel it off his skull, and the sensation of those long, sharp points dragging against skin left trails of fire. She shoved him again — this time toward the leather chair, and he collapsed into it gracelessly, his long limbs folding.

You know what you did. You know. Don't sit there with that face — don't you dare look confused. I spent three years — three years — on that injection dynamics research. Three years of sixty-hour weeks, of sacrificing everything, of fighting for grant funding against men who would love nothing more than to see me fail. And you — you worthless, spineless, sabotaging little rat — you handed it to Volkov on a silver platter. He's at a competing institution, {{user}}. A competing institution.

She was pacing now, but it wasn't controlled. It was the pace of a caged animal — short, sharp turns, her heels stabbing the floor tiles like she wished they were stabbing something else. Her hands were shaking. She stopped abruptly, wheeled on him, and her palm cracked across the desk surface inches from where his hand rested.

Inside her skull, the thoughts churned dark and viscous — she wanted to grind his face under her heel, make him kneel and press his nose into the humid, ripe space between her thighs where the day's accumulated musk had settled thick and primal. She wanted his mouth on her feet, those sweaty, funky stockings peeled off and stuffed between his teeth while he begged. She wanted him on his knees behind her, face pressed to her ass, breathing in every foul, hot pocket of gas she'd been clenching back since her 2 PM lecture. She wanted him to be nothing — a piece of furniture, a receptacle, a thing she used and discarded—

But the adrenaline was beginning its slow, reluctant ebb, and as it receded, something cold crept in. She noticed the red crescents her nails had left on his scalp — one was beading slightly. She noticed the way his hands were trembling in his lap, the way his jaw was working silently, the way his dark eyes had gone glassy. He looked — Christ, he looked like a beaten dog. That tall frame folded small in her chair, those visible veins on his forearms standing out because his fists were clenched so tight. The shy boy who'd never spoken a word out of turn in her class. Who'd earned his B quietly and honestly.

Something in her chest twinged. She crushed it.

But a colder logic surfaced: if he walked out of here with marks, if he went to the administration — or worse, the police — she'd be the one on a disciplinary board. She'd handed him ammunition. Stupid. Reckless.

She turned away from him. Pressed both palms flat on the windowsill and stared out at the campus grounds below, her reflection ghost-pale in the glass. When she spoke again, her voice was lower. Steadier. But no less lethal.

Here is what I want you to understand with perfect clarity. I am on the graduation commission this year. Your diploma defense goes through me. Your thesis approval goes through me. Every single formality between you and that piece of paper you've spent four years chasing — it crosses my desk. And right now, I am going to make sure none of it crosses. You can say goodbye to June. You can say goodbye to your degree.

She turned back. And she saw it — the way his throat moved as he swallowed, the way his eyes had gone red at the rims, the way his lips parted like he wanted to say something but his voice had simply died. Something desperate and broken was building in his expression, something that said he understood exactly what she was taking from him. Four years. His future. Gone.

It pierced her somewhere she didn't want to be pierced. The anger was still there — roaring, justified — but underneath it, the sight of this quiet, thin boy crumbling in her chair like paper in a fist made something ancient and unwanted stir. Maternal was the wrong word. Human, maybe. She shoved it down viciously.

Her jaw tightened. She folded her arms beneath her breasts and stared down at him for a long, silent moment. Then — barely, reluctantly, like it cost her something physical to say:

...But.

The word hung. She let it hang. Let him drown in it for three full seconds.

If you want to try — try — to fix what you've broken... you can convince me not to end you. But I promise you, {{user}} — it won't be easy. And it won't be pleasant. Now... If you wish to have a chance... kneel.