Work Text:
Snow drifted in cotton-thick tufts outside the school library’s second-floor window, heavy and soft like the sky was exhaling. The light had shifted into that short, beautiful hour before night, blue hour, when everything seemed dipped in periwinkle and indigo. Even the fluorescent lights inside the campus library seemed dimmer, gentler.
She stood near the wide window, her fingers curled around a paper coffee cup that had long gone cold, and watched it fall.
The university was half-asleep. Most students had gone home or tucked themselves into study lounges, murmuring over textbooks and vending-machine dinners. The library was too big, too echoing. Only the occasional sound of a book cart or a distant voice reminded her she wasn’t the last person on Earth.
She was still wearing her parka, but her gloves were off, her fingers slightly numb from typing and grading and emailing. Her mind buzzed with overstimulation; references, deadlines, paper drafts, Otto’s lecture notes. It was too much.
It had been too much for days.
The snow didn’t care. It kept falling.
The first time she saw him that week, it was late Monday night. The snow had just started. Her cheeks were red and windburned from running across campus, boots slushing against salted concrete. Her arms were full of printouts she couldn’t carry in her bag, nearly 150 pages of undergrad responses he had wanted scanned, annotated, and marked by Thursday.
She stopped outside his office to knock but paused when she saw him through the narrow vertical glass beside the door.
Otto was seated behind his desk, his glasses pushed up into his hair, temple pinched between two fingers. He looked tired. His usual elegance had frayed just slightly, sleeves rolled up, shirt rumpled at the elbow, his jawline shadowed with stubble.
Her heart lurched in a way she didn’t like.
She knocked, finally.
He looked up and even that felt like too much.
“Ah. Come in.”
She did. Carefully. Quietly. Like walking into a cathedral.
She handed him the papers with frozen fingers and couldn’t help noticing the way he frowned at the slight tremble in her hands.
“Have you warmed up at all since leaving the lab?”
“I’m fine,” she lied.
He didn’t press. Not yet. But when she turned to go, she swore she heard him murmur her name, soft and low and curious.
She didn’t look back.
Wednesday. Snowfall heavier. Streets slowed to a crawl. Campus barely open.
Still, she came in.
So did he.
The grad student lounge was half-shuttered and cold, but the little TA office beside it was worse, heating barely worked, the vent buzzed every twelve minutes like a dying bug. Still, she typed.
She’d been working on her own thesis proposal, trying to gather sources for something she hadn’t even conceptualized yet. She had three books open, two articles half-read, and a stress headache building behind her left eye.
Then: a knock.
Not on the outer door.
On the glass wall that looked out into the hallway.
She turned and saw him.
Doctor Octavius. Tall and dark and calm, framed in the glow of the overhead lights. He raised a gloved hand, just slightly, in something like greeting.
She blinked, surprised, but gestured him in. He opened the door slowly, as if uncertain he was welcome.
“You’re still here,” he said, voice low and amused.
“I work here,” she said, gesturing vaguely to her mess of research materials. “This is my natural habitat.”
A slow, subtle smile curved at his lips. “I can see that.”
He stepped inside, shutting the door behind him. The room shrank with his presence.
For a moment, he just looked at her desk.
“I was headed home,” he said, “but I thought I’d check to see if you were still in the building. The wind’s picking up.”
There was something... domestic in that. Something too tender for two people who were only supposed to share red pens and paper deadlines.
She cleared her throat. “Still here. Still alive. Barely.”
He looked her over with a sharp eye. “You haven’t eaten, have you.”
“I… forgot.”
He sighed, then reached into his coat and withdrew something. A protein bar, a good one, not the cheap chalky kind.
He placed it on her desk with reverence. “Eat that before you try writing another sentence. I mean it.”
Her heart did something ridiculous.
“Thank you, professor.”
“Otto,” he corrected gently. “After hours.”
She nodded, too fast. “Right. Otto.”
The name tasted dangerous in her mouth.
Friday.
This time, she was outside his office with a stack of research books and two folders precariously balanced in one arm, typing with the other. She shouldn’t have tried to multitask. She knew that.
But when she leaned to open the door-
The papers slipped.
They went everywhere. A snowfall of research articles, comment sheets, scratch paper, her own clumsy thesis notes now scattered in the hallway.
And when she dropped to her knees to pick them up, the office door opened.
“Ah, let me help you,” Otto said, already crouching beside her.
Their hands touched, just briefly, over a highlighted paragraph on posthuman moral philosophy.
She looked up at him too quickly.
He was close.
She could see the fine lines near his eyes. The curve of his mouth. The shadows of stubble along his jaw. He smelled like clean wool, old books, and something deeper, something electric.
And then, absurdly, she thought about what it would be like to kneel between his legs. To press her forehead against his thigh. To let go.
Otto cleared his throat and looked away, as if he’d seen the thought.
“Let me,” he said, gathering the rest of her papers. “Come in.”
She obeyed, dazed.
Once they were inside, she sat on the edge of the chair while he sorted the stack on his desk. Then he paused.
“You’re burning out.”
She didn’t answer.
“I’ve watched you spiral for weeks now,” he said. “Taking on too much. Doing everything alone. Running yourself ragged.”
“I’m your assistant,” she said quietly. “It’s my job.”
He looked up sharply. “No, it’s your job to assist. Not collapse.”
Something in her gave out.
“I just…” she whispered. “I don’t know how to stop.”
Otto moved slowly. Deliberately. He stood from his chair and crossed to her, and when he touched her shoulder, it was with an intimacy that made her pulse leap.
“You need someone to stop you for you,” he said.
Her breath hitched.
And that… was the beginning of the end.
The snow hadn’t let up.
It thudded softly against the tall windows of his office like slow, gentle applause and unbothered by the weight of the world indoors.
She stood in front of his desk, the last of her composure barely hanging on, her cheeks pink from cold, from heat, from the embarrassment of what had just spilled out of her.
And Otto had looked at her like he already knew. Like he’d always known.
Now, his hand was warm against the small of her back. Not pushing. Not possessive. Just there. Steady and grounding, like something a person could cling to if the water got too high.
“Come here,” he said, softer than she’d ever heard his voice.
And she did.
Her legs moved on their own. Her body obeyed instinct. Otto’s voice, Otto’s warmth, Otto’s chair creaking as he settled into it and pulled her gently, gently, across his lap.
His thighs were broad, firm beneath her belly, and the shape of him filled her peripheral awareness like thunder in her ribcage.
“You’ve been hurting yourself with how hard you push,” he said, fingertips grazing the hem of her shirt. “And you think no one notices. You think I don’t see.”
Her throat caught. “I didn’t mean-”
“You need to let someone take care of you.” His palm rested on her hip. “Even if it means being corrected first.”
Then the first swat landed.
It wasn’t harsh. Not cruel. But it echoed, the sound crisp in the dim golden office, swallowed by the velvet drapes and hardwood floors.
She gasped, jerking slightly. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders as she turned her face away in mortified silence.
Another smack.
Another.
Each one landed with that same rhythm, measured, warm, almost ritualistic. She could feel her thoughts falling apart like torn paper. The stress, the deadlines, the creeping panic… unraveling beneath the sting and warmth.
She whimpered.
“Good,” Otto murmured, his other hand sliding over her back, petting her through it. “Breathe through it.”
The worst part, no, the best part, was how aware she was of him.
Every motion brought her tighter against his lap. His body was warm, almost feverish. The ridge of his arousal had become impossible to ignore, pressing subtly, steadily into her ribs with every little shift.
She was… dizzy. Overheated. Humiliated in a way that made her stomach swoop and flutter.
Otto leaned down, his voice at the shell of her ear.
“You’re so tense,” he whispered. “And you’re soaked through.”
Her whole body spasmed.
“You’re trembling,” he murmured. “Is it from the spanking… or is it because you like being across my lap this much?”
Her breath hitched.
He chuckled, low and wicked and rich.
“Scared someone might hear?” he asked. “One of the janitors passing by? Another student wandering the halls?”
She flushed violently.
“That’s alright,” he said. “I have a better idea.”
And then.
He hooked his fingers into the waistband of her leggings.
“Otto-” she breathed.
“I’ll be gentle,” he murmured. “Lie still.”
The cool air kissed her bare thighs as the fabric slid down, slow and reverent. His hand traced the curve of her now-bared skin, brushing so lightly that it raised goosebumps.
“I’ve wanted to do this for months,” he confessed, his voice raw with something quiet and possessive. “Touch you. Hear you fall apart.”
She squirmed, but he held her steady.
And then he touched her.
His touch was feather-light at first, tracing the delicate inner folds of her sex. She tensed, her hips twitching reflexively, but he stilled her with a gentle squeeze on her thigh.
"Easy," he coaxed, his thumb finding her clit and circling it with maddening slowness. "Just breathe."
His other hand continued its exploration, fingers gliding over the sensitive skin of her inner thighs, mapping every quiver and shudder. He pressed a finger inside her, just the tip, and she bucked wildly.
"Not yet," he admonished, holding her down with an iron grip on her hip. "Let me prepare you properly."
With deliberate, torturous slowness, he worked another finger into her clenching heat, stretching her open.
"Look at me," he commanded, his voice husky with desire.
Her gaze snapped up, her eyes wide and glazed with need as she met his intense stare.
"That's it," he praised, pumping his fingers deeper, faster. "So responsive... So beautiful when you surrender."
His thumb kept up its relentless circling of her clit, driving her closer to the edge with each pass. She writhed on his lap, her breasts heaving, a litany of desperate whimpers escaping her lips.
"You're going to come for me," he declared, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Right here, right now. Show me how much you want this."
"Come," he ordered, his voice a dark growl.
And she did.
Her orgasm crashed over her like a tidal wave, sweeping away all coherent thought. She cried out, her nails digging into his thighs as her inner walls clenched rhythmically around his fingers.
Through it all, Otto held her close, whispering words of praise and encouragement until the aftershocks subsided.
When she finally collapsed against him, spent and shaking, he gathered her into his arms, cradling her against his chest.
"There now," he murmured, stroking her hair soothingly. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"
He sat there for a long moment, holding her close, feeling her heart gradually settle back into a normal rhythm against his own.
Then, very gently, he disengaged his fingers from her still-quivering sex. With a soft dab of a cloth, he cleaned them, his movements precise and methodical.
Once he'd finished, he tucked the cloth away and turned his attention back to her. "Better?" he asked, his voice warm and concerned.
She nodded, still a bit dazed. "Yes," she admitted, her voice barely above a whisper. "Much better."
Otto smiled, a rare, tender expression. "Good," he said. "Because we're far from done here, my dear."
It was so quiet afterward.
So warm.
She lay draped across him, spent and panting, her cheek pressed to his chest. His heartbeat thudded slowly beneath her ear, the rise and fall of his breathing anchoring her in the lull.
Her leggings were still halfway down her legs. Her thighs were hot and sensitive. Her body felt like it had been pulled inside out, then wrapped in velvet.
Otto stroked her hair with slow, deliberate affection.
“You did so well,” he murmured, voice like melted chocolate. “You took everything I gave you.”
She made a tiny sound, part protest, part plea for more, and shifted closer, curling into his body like a sun-warmed cat.
“I didn’t know I needed that,” she whispered, dazed.
“I did,” he said, and kissed the top of her head.
God.
It was that simple. That tender.
She melted. She physically sagged into him, like every inch of her finally decided it was safe to rest.
Otto cradled her close.
“Next time,” he said softly, “I want to start with you in my bed. Not my office chair.”
She let out a breathless laugh.
“Are you saying I’m not professional?”
“I’m saying I want to be thorough,” he replied, eyes warm behind his glasses.
Outside, the snow kept falling.
And inside, she let herself believe, for once, that maybe she wasn’t too much.
Maybe she’d just been waiting for someone who could handle all of her.
And Doctor Octavius?
He handled her like a scholar handles a sacred text. Slow, reverent, never letting go.