Chapter 2: Haunted by Memory
The hum was still in his bones.
Three days had passed since the office, since the oak desk and the tearing and the words that felt more invasive than the act itself. Jon moved through the world as if wrapped in cotton wool. Sounds were muffled. The cafeteria clatter, his roommate’s loud video games, the drone of lectures—all of it happened on the other side of a thick pane of glass. Inside, there was only a relentless, buzzing echo. The memory of the stretch, the burn, the shocking fullness. The look on Martin Abernathy’s face when he came.
Jon’s dorm room felt different now. The fairy lights strung over his bed, once cozy, seemed to cast long, accusing shadows. The stacks of books on the floor were no longer comforting ruins of knowledge; they were barricades. He hadn’t washed the sheets. He told himself it was because he was busy, but at night, he’d press his face into the pillow and sometimes, he imagined he could still smell the professor’s soap, that faint hint of leather.
His body was a traitor. It buzzed with a persistent, low-grade arousal that shame couldn’t quell. He’d catch his reflection in the dark laptop screen—his hair a mess, his eyes hollow—and his hand would drift unconsciously to his stomach, remembering the violent spill of his own release, the hot drip of Martin’s after. He’d jerk his hand away, face burning.
The recorder sat on his desk, a guilty artifact. He’d transcribed the interview. Martin’s polished, academic answers were all there. The pauses, the throat-clearings, the unspoken things that hung in the air—Jon heard them screaming in the silence between the words. He’d written a draft of the article. It was competent. Dry. It said nothing.
His phone was the problem. It was a dark rectangle of potential he carried in his pocket like a live grenade. He had not saved Martin’s number from the departmental contact email, but he’d memorized it. He typed it out a dozen times a day, finger hovering over the call button. He never pressed it.
On the fourth night, the dream came.
He was back in the office, but the books were naked, empty shelves. The desk was gone. Martin stood in the center of the room, backlit by the window, completely naked. He said nothing. He just crooked a finger. Jon walked to him, also naked, his skin pebbling in the cool air. Martin didn’t kiss him. He simply turned him around, bent him over nothing, and pushed inside him in one smooth, brutal motion. There was no pain this time. Only a deep, soul-scorching pleasure that coiled in his guts like a spring. He woke up just as he was about to come, his own shout jerking him upright.
The room was silent except for the frantic thump of his heart. The fairy lights glowed, a soft, mocking constellation. His boxers were soaked, his cock a hard, aching line against his stomach.
“Fuck,” he whispered to the empty dark.
He couldn’t outrun it. The memory, the phantom sensation, the fucking need. It was a physical ache, a hollow place inside him that had been opened and now demanded to be filled. With a shuddering breath, he gave in.
He shoved the covers down. The cool air hit his feverish skin. He pushed his boxers down his hips, freeing his erection. He spit into his palm, the sound vulgar in the quiet room, and wrapped his fingers around himself. He tried to stroke, but it felt juvenile, insufficient. It wasn’t what he wanted.
What he wanted was the stretch. The burn. The feeling of being unmade.
Whimpering, he slicked his fingers with more spit and reached behind himself. He’d never done this before, not to himself. The angle was awkward, his muscles tight with tension and shame. He pressed a single finger against his entrance, and his whole body flinched. It was different. So different from Martin’s assured, demanding touch.
He pushed past the tight ring of muscle, biting his lip to keep from crying out. It was a shallow, clumsy intrusion. He hooked his finger, searching, and a bolt of sharp sensation made his back arch. He gasped.
Eyes squeezed shut, he conjured the memory. The weight of Martin’s body against his back. The smell of his skin. The rough fabric of his trousers against Jon’s bare thighs. The desk shuddering with each thrust.
“That’s it,” Martin’s voice growled in his mind. “Take it.”
Jon added a second finger. The stretch was immediate, burning, exquisite. He pumped his fingers slowly, fucking himself on his own hand, imagining the thicker, harder length they were mimicking. His other hand worked his cock in a frantic, mismatched rhythm. Pre-come leaked over his knuckles.
“See?” the memory-voice purred in his ear. “This is what you needed. To be opened.”
He was losing his mind. The pleasure was a dark riptide, pulling him under. He scissored his fingers, wanting more, wanting to be ruined. He imagined Martin watching him, those intelligent eyes dark with lust, seeing him debase himself like this. The thought sent a fresh wave of heat through him.
His rhythm broke, becoming jagged, desperate. He was panting, sweat beading on his chest. The coil in his gut tightened, tightened, until it was a white-hot wire of tension.
“Come for me,” the phantom voice commanded.
With a ragged, broken cry that he muffled in his pillow, Jon came. His release striped his stomach and chest in hot, violent pulses, his body convulsing around the fingers still buried inside him. For a few seconds, there was nothing but the aftershock and the roar of blood in his ears.
Then the silence rushed back in, heavier than before.
He pulled his fingers out, feeling sore and empty. The mess on his stomach was already cooling, sticky and shameful. He lay there, exposed in the dim light, waiting for the self-loathing to crash over him. It came, but it was dulled, diluted by a deeper, more terrifying realization.
He wanted it again. The real thing. He wanted Martin Abernathy to ruin him all over again.
He cleaned himself up with a t-shirt from the floor, his movements mechanical. He pulled his boxers back on and sat on the edge of the bed, head in his hands. The glowing digits of his clock read 3:17 AM. The world was asleep. He was awake, hollowed out and humming.
He picked up his phone. The screen lit up his face in the dark. He opened a new text message. He typed in the memorized number.
His thumbs hovered. What did you say? Thanks for the life-altering fuck? I can’t stop thinking about your cock?
He deleted the half-formed sentences. He typed one word, a question mark hovering after it. He stared at it for a full minute, his pulse hammering in his throat. He erased the question mark. It was too needy. Too uncertain.
He just sent the word.
You.
He put the phone face down on his mattress as if it were a venomous insect. He paced the small room, three steps one way, three steps back. The fairy lights felt like prison bars.
Five minutes passed. Ten.
His phone buzzed, a single, violent vibration against the sheet.
He snatched it up. The screen burned his eyes.
My office. Saturday. 4 PM. The building will be empty.
No hello. No name. Just a time and a place. An assumption, cold and direct, that Jon would be there. That he wanted to be.
Jon’s breath caught. His fingers were ice. He typed a reply, deleted it. Typed another. He settled on the barest acknowledgment, a thread of connection.
Ok.
He didn’t add a period. It felt too final. He just let the word hang there, a surrender.
The reply came almost instantly.
Don’t be late.
Jon put the phone down. He didn’t pace anymore. He stood still in the center of his cluttered room, the faint glow from the lights casting his long shadow against the tower of books. The hum in his bones had crystallized into a sharp, clear note of anticipation. It sounded a lot like fear. It felt exactly like desire.
He had thirty-six hours to wait. He knew, with a certainty that chilled and thrilled him, that he would count every single one.
The thirty-six hours stretched and compressed, a cruel form of temporal torture. In class, words dissolved into meaningless sound. Eating was a mechanical process of putting tasteless fuel into a trembling body. Sleep was a fractured series of images—hands, oak, the smell of leather. He washed his sheets in a hot, guilty frenzy, scrubbing until his hands were raw.
He shaved carefully Saturday morning, nicking his jaw. He stood under a scalding shower until his skin was pink. He dressed in simple, dark jeans and a plain grey sweater, discarding five options on the floor. He wanted to look casual, not like he was trying. He was trying desperately.
At 3:45 PM, he stood outside the history building. The autumn air was crisp, biting. The campus was a ghost town on weekends, just a few stragglers shuffling in the distance. He watched the second hand on his watch tick, each movement a deafening click in the quiet.
He pushed the heavy door open at 3:58. The hallway was cavernous, silent. His footsteps echoed like gunshots. He stopped outside office 314, his hand raised to knock. The door was ajar, just a sliver of that honeyed light spilling onto the linoleum.
He pushed it open.
Martin was at his shelves, his back to the door, sliding a heavy volume into place. He wore dark trousers and a charcoal cable-knit sweater. He looked domestic, thoughtful. He didn’t turn.
“Close the door, Jon.” His voice was calm, a contrast to the storm in Jon’s chest.
Jon pushed it shut. The click of the lock engaging was definitive. Martin finally turned, leaning back against the shelves. He looked Jon over, a slow, appraising journey from his shoes to his flushed face. The silence stretched, thick and heavy.
“You came.” It wasn’t a question. It was an observation, flavored with a hint of satisfaction.
“You said not to be late.” Jon’s voice was thin.
A ghost of a smile touched Martin’s lips. He pushed off from the shelves and walked to his desk. He didn’t sit. He stood beside it, his hand resting on the same edge where the recorder had been. “Do you know why you’re here?”
Jon’s mouth was dry. He tried to summon his wit, his intelligence. Nothing came. “For the interview?”
Martin chuckled, a low, warm sound. “We’re past that, I think. Don’t hide behind your notebooks now.” He gestured vaguely at Jon’s empty hands. “You’re here because you can’t stop thinking about what happened on this desk. Your body remembers it. It’s hungry for it again.”
The directness was a slap. Jon flinched, but he didn’t deny it. He couldn’t. He just stared at the grain of the wood, remembering the feel of it against his cheek.
“Look at me,” Martin commanded.
Jon forced his eyes up. Martin’s gaze was penetrating, stripped of its usual academic gentleness. This was a different man. A man who issued orders and expected them to be followed.
“Say it.”
“I…” Jon swallowed. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“About what, specifically?”
Jon felt a flash of defiance, quickly drowned in a wave of heat. “About you. Fucking me.”
“Good.” Martin nodded. “Honesty is the only currency that matters in this room.” He walked around the desk, stopping an arm’s length from Jon. “Take off your sweater.”
Jon’s hands shook as he grasped the hem. He pulled it over his head, his hair staticking. He stood there in his t-shirt, feeling exposed and foolish.
“The rest,” Martin said, his voice flat.
Jon’s fingers fumbled with his belt. The rasp of the leather sliding free was obscenely loud. He pushed his jeans and briefs down his thighs, letting them pool around his ankles. The air was cool on his skin. He was already half-hard, his cock twitching against his stomach from shame and anticipation.
“Turn around. Put your hands on the desk where they were.”
Jon obeyed, his bare backside exposed, his chest lowering onto the cool wood. He felt the ghost of the previous encounter imprinted in the grain. He heard Martin move behind him, the sound of a drawer opening, the click of a bottle.
Cold gel hit his skin, making him jerk. Martin’s fingers, slick and demanding, were suddenly there, pressing inside him without preamble. Jon cried out, his knuckles white on the desk.
“You’re still so tight,” Martin murmured, his voice close to Jon’s ear. He worked his finger in deeper, then added a second. The stretch was familiar now, a welcomed burn. “Did you touch yourself? Thinking of this?”
“Yes,” Jon gasped, the confession torn from him.
Martin’s free hand gripped Jon’s hip, his fingers digging in. He scissored his fingers, opening him up. “You wanted my cock. Is that it?”
“Yes.” Jon’s voice was a moan.
“Tell me.”
“I wanted your cock.” The words were filthy, perfect.
Martin removed his fingers. Jon heard the rustle of clothing, the sound of a zipper. Then the blunt, hot head of him was pressing against Jon’s entrance, a threat and a promise. Martin didn’t push. He just held it there, letting Jon feel the pressure, the impending invasion.
“Beg for it,” Martin said, his breath hot on Jon’s neck.
Tears of humiliation and pure want pricked Jon’s eyes. He was past pride. “Please.”
“Please what?”
“Please fuck me.” The words were a whimper.
Martin pushed in, not with the brutal force of the first time, but with a slow, inexorable pressure that stole Jon’s breath. He filled him completely, a deep, burning stretch that made Jon see stars. He held still, buried to the hilt.
“You feel that?” Martin growled, his hips flush against Jon’s ass. “That’s where you belong. Split open on my cock.”
Then he moved. A long, slow withdrawal, then a driving thrust back in. He set a punishing, measured rhythm, each stroke punching a ragged sound from Jon’s throat. This wasn’t the frantic, chaotic fucking of before. This was deliberate. This was ownership.
Martin’s hand left Jon’s hip and snaked around his front, grasping his hard, leaking cock. He matched his thrusts with rough strokes, his grip tight.
“You’re gonna come just like this,” Martin said, his voice rough with effort. “Come all over my desk like a filthy little slut. That’s what you are, isn’t it?”
The degradation, the raw physicality, the intense friction inside him—it was a feedback loop of pleasure. Jon babbled, nonsensical words, yes, please, fuck, sir. The coil in his gut wound impossibly tight.
Martin’s pace grew erratic, his own control fraying. His thrusts became harder, deeper, his fingers a vise on Jon’s cock. “Do it,” he snarled.
Jon’s orgasm ripped through him, a devastating wave that shook his entire body. His release shot across the desk in long stripes, his muscles clamping down hard on Martin’s cock inside him.
The convulsions tipped Martin over the edge. With a guttural roar, he slammed home and held, his body shuddering as he emptied himself deep inside Jon in hot, pulsing jets.
For a long moment, they stayed locked together, connected, breathing in ragged unison. Martin slowly pulled out, and Jon slumped forward, spent and trembling. The familiar, sore ache bloomed within him, a welcome pain.
Silence descended, broken only by their labored breathing. Jon heard the soft sound of Martin fixing his clothes. Then, a box of tissues appeared on the desk beside his head.
“Clean yourself up.”
Jon’s movements were slow, boneless. He wiped his stomach, then reached between his legs, feeling the slick mess there. He was sore, used, dripping.
When he turned, Martin was sitting behind his desk again, as composed as if he’d just finished a lecture. He was watching Jon with an unreadable expression. “Get dressed.”
Jon pulled his clothes on, the fabric whispering against his oversensitive skin. The silence was different now. The frantic energy was gone, leaving a hollow, quiet space.
Martin steepled his fingers. “The article. How is it?”
The whiplash was disorienting. Jon just stared.
“The piece you’re writing. On my book. How is it coming along?” Martin’s tone was pure professor now, clinical and interested.
“It’s… fine,” Jon managed.
“It’s not.” Martin leaned forward. “It’s competent but bloodless. You’re writing around the subject. You’re afraid of it.” He paused, letting the words hang. “You need to rewrite it. Write what you feel. The fear. The hunger. The cost of the windowpane. Write that.”
Jon understood. This wasn’t just about sex. It was a different kind of unmasking. Martin was demanding truth on the page as brutally as he’d demanded it on the desk.
“I don’t know if I can,” Jon whispered.
“You can.” Martin stood, ending the audience. He walked Jon to the door, his hand resting briefly on Jon’s shoulder. “The first draft is for you. The second draft is for the reader. You’ve finished the first draft of yourself here, tonight. Now go write the second.”
He opened the door. The hallway light was harsh, unforgiving.
Jon stepped out, turned to say something, anything. But the door was already closing, the lock clicking softly into place. He was alone in the cool, empty corridor, the scent of their coupling still on his skin, a new assignment burning in his mind.