Chapter 2: Oral Examination
Days contracted around the promise of Friday. Minalan moved through his classes like a ghost, his physical body a husk going through the motions while his mind replayed the searing perfection of the previous week. The touch.The words. The illicit stillness of that back room. The way Davies had cleaned him off afterwards—that clinical, devastating tenderness.
When Friday afternoon finally bled into a damp, gray dusk, Minalan’s nerves were wound so tight he felt musical. The same corridor. The same heavy door, now with its frosted glass pane dark, promising privacy. He knocked, the sound swallowed by the building’s weekend emptiness.
“It’s open.” Davies’s voice was muffled, pleasant.
Minalan stepped into the main office. It was dim, lit only by a green-shaded desk lamp and the low, orange flicker of a small gas fireplace Davies must have had installed in the hearth. The professor sat in a deep wingback chair, a book open in his lap. He looked up and smiled, a real one that reached his eyes. It disarmed Minalan completely.
“Right on time. Punctuality is a virtue in any academic pursuit.” He closed the book—it was Leaves of Grass—and set it aside. He was dressed more casually than Minalan had ever seen him: dark trousers, a charcoal sweater that made his eyes seem brighter. “Are you ready to continue?”
“I think so,” Minalan said, his voice steadier than he felt.
“Good. Come through.”
The back study was warmer tonight, the single brass lamp glowing, the scent of leather and vanilla more pronounced, mixed with the faint, mineral scent of the gas fire from the next room. Davies didn’t immediately begin. He leaned against the desk, watching Minalan.
“Last week was about establishing the dynamic. The theoretical framework. This week, we apply that framework to a close reading. An… experiential analysis.” He crossed his arms. “Undress, please.”
It was easier this time. The act felt less like disrobing and more like shedding a skin—the skin of the ordinary student. His clothes pooled on the rug. He stood, waiting, the cool air raising goosebumps on his arms.
Davies’s gaze was intense, but thoughtful. “Turn around. And kneel.”
Minalan did, lowering himself onto the dense pile of the Persian rug. It was scratchy against his knees. He faced the wall of books, their leather spines a kaleidoscope of faded gold and crimson.
He heard Davies move behind him, the soft whisper of his own clothes being removed. Then, a warm hand settled on the small of Minalan’s back. “A proper analysis requires full immersion,” Davies murmured, his voice close. “You must encounter the text with all your senses. You must be open to it.”
The other hand joined the first, smoothing over the curve of Minalan’s rear. The touch was proprietary, assessing. “You’re a quick study. A very receptive text.”
Then Davies knelt behind him. Minalan held his breath. He felt the professor’s thumbs gently part him, the cool air a shock, then the sudden, intimate warmth of Davies’s breath.
The first touch of his tongue was a bolt of lightning.
It wasn’t a hesitant exploration. It was deliberate, focused, applying the same methodical intensity Davies used to parse a complex stanza. He worked with a scholar’s precision, mapping the territory, circling, then delving deeper. The sensation was beyond anything Minalan had imagined—a hot, wet, shocking intimacy that translated directly into a keening sound in the back of his own throat.
“Relax into it,” Davies instructed, his voice a low, vibrating hum against Minalan’s skin. “Don’t just receive the sensation. Interpret it. What is it telling you?”
Minalan couldn’t speak. He could only gasp, his fingers digging into the rug. The feeling built, a slow, relentless crescendo of pleasure that bypassed thought entirely. Davies’s tongue moved with a knowing rhythm, a cadence that felt inexplicably like learning. Each stroke felt like an unlocking. Comprehension arrived as a physical truth: this was worship and dismantling, all at once.
His gasps became ragged moans, his body arching back, pushing against that brilliant, seeking mouth. He was babbling, fragments of words that weren’t words at all.
Davies pulled back, leaving Minalan trembling and bereft. He rested his cheek against the swell of Minalan’s buttock for a moment, breathing heavily. “Good. Very good. You’re learning the language.” He stood, his own arousal evident.
He guided Minalan to his feet and turned him around. Davies’s mouth was wet, his eyes dark pools of intent in the lamplight. He kissed him, deep and possessive, letting Minalan taste the salt-sharp truth of himself.
“On the desk,” Davies breathed against his lips.
Minalan scrambled onto the broad, worn surface. The cool leather of the desktop was a sharp contrast to his overheated skin. Davies stood between his knees, his hands running up Minalan’s thighs, a possessor surveying his prize.
From the desk drawer, he produced a small bottle. The click of the cap breaking the seal was loud. He poured clear gel into his palm, warming it.
“This next part,” Davies said, his eyes locking on Minalan’s, “is about trust manifest as penetration. The final surrender of the student’s boundaries. The professor’s authoritative entry into the text. It should hurt, for a moment. The friction of new understanding always does. Then it transforms.”
He pressed a slick finger against him, and Minalan tensed, a spike of primal anxiety shooting through the haze of desire.
“Breathe out,” Davies commanded, soft but absolute.
Minalan exhaled, and Davies’s finger entered him, slowly, a relentless, burning fullness. The pain was bright and sharp, exactly as promised. He cried out, his head falling back.
“Shhh,” Davies soothed, his other hand stroking Minalan’s flank. “There. That’s the threshold. Now… let it become something else.”
He began to move his finger, a gentle in-and-out, and the pain began to recede, fraying at the edges into something stranger, deeper. A second finger joined, stretching him further, and the sensation flipped, crossing a line into a shocking, profound pleasure that made Minalan’s eyes fly open.
“Oh god.”
“See?” Davies whispered, his own breathing shallow as he scissored his fingers, opening him. “The pain was just the preface. The body’s resistance. This… this is the chapter’s true subject.”
He withdrew his fingers. Minalan whimpered at the loss.
Then Davies was positioning himself, the blunt, hot pressure of him replacing the fingers. He pushed, and the world narrowed to a single, burning point of entry that once again made Minalan gasp. But it was quicker this time, the memory of the pleasure that had followed smoothing the way.
Davies seated himself fully, and they both went still, joined, breathing in ragged unison. Davies’s face was a mask of strained control.
“Look at me,” he said.
Minalan forced his eyes open, meeting the professor’s intense gaze. Held there, physically pinned by his body and metaphysically pinned by his stare, he had never felt more seen, more known.
“Now,” Davies said, beginning to move with a slow, grinding roll of his hips, “we read together.”
The rhythm was a discourse. Each thrust was a punctuation, a new clause in a sentence of sensation that was building towards an inescapable conclusion. Davies’s hands gripped Minalan’s hips, guiding the tempo, sometimes slow and deep for emphasis, sometimes faster, a flurry of intense argument.
“This is where the theory lives,” Davies gritted out, his composure fraying as he drove deeper. “Not in books. In the sweat. In the surrender. You give me this… this exquisite submission… and I give you a version of yourself you couldn’t access alone. A better student. A truer one.”
Minalan was incoherent, his mind blank of everything but the feeling of being filled, claimed, rewritten from the inside out. His own hand flew to his erection, but Davies caught his wrist.
“No. This isn’t about that simple release. This is about coming from the inside. From being used for your professor’s deeper education. Let me pull it from you. Let my want be the only thing that matters.”
He shifted angle, hitting a spot that made Minalan shout, a raw, broken sound that seemed to come from the very core of him. It tipped Davies over the edge. With a choked-off groan, the professor stiffened, his rhythm shattering into a final, desperate series of thrusts as he came.
The feeling of it, hot and wet inside him, was the final key. It unlocked a climax in Minalan that felt seismic, a wave that tore through him without a single touch to his own flesh, wrenching a silent, open-mouthed scream from his lungs as his body convulsed around Davies’s.
For a long time, there was only the sound of the fire crackling in the next room and their ragged breathing.
Davies carefully pulled out and collapsed into his own wingback chair, drawing Minalan down with him, so that the younger man lay sprawled across his lap, spent and boneless. Davies stroked his hair, his touch now purely gentle.
“You were exceptional,” Davies said softly, his voice raw. “An absolute revelation.”
Minalan nuzzled into the scratchy wool of his sweater, too wrecked for words. A deep, warm lethargy was seeping into his bones.
After a while, Davies stirred.“Come. Let’s get cleaned up.”
He led Minalan, who moved like a sleepwalker, to a small, private bathroom Minalan hadn’t known existed. It was cramped and old-fashioned, with black-and-white tile. Davies ran a warm, damp cloth over him with that same startling tenderness, wiping away the evidence of their session.
As Minalan dressed in the quiet study, Davies wrote something on a slip of heavy, cream-colored paper. He handed it to Minalan. It was a list.
John Donne: Holy Sonnet XIV (‘Batter my heart…’)
The Song of Solomon, King James Version
Selected fragments, Sappho
Foucault: ‘The History of Sexuality, Volume 1’ (Introduction)
“Your reading,” Davies said. “For next time. Consider the thematic through-lines. Divine violence. Erotic spirituality. The construction of desire by power structures.” He smiled that disarmingly warm smile again. “We’ll discuss your interpretations. And then…” He let the promise hang, delicious and dark.
Minalan folded the paper and put it in his pocket. It felt heavier than any syllabus he’d ever been given.
He walked back to his dorm through the chilly night, his body humming with a profound new awareness. He didn’t feel used. He felt… authored. And he couldn’t wait for the next chapter.
And he couldn’t wait for the next chapter.
The weekend passed in a fever-dream haze. On Monday morning, Minalan's phone buzzed discreetly during his 10 a.m. economics lecture.
Professor Davies: The Donne sonnet. Your initial thoughts on the ‘three-person’d God’ as an inherently invasive structure? Not the theology.The mechanics.
Minalan’s thumbs hovered over the screen. The question was a spark in dry tinder. He typed, erased, then typed again, his focus entirely torn from supply curves.
Minalan: It’s a siege. Not a request. The speaker wants to be overthrown. Broken in.
Professor Davies: Efficient. A siege requires a breached gate.
Professor Davies: Did you bring Foucault to your poli-sci class? Let’s see the current state of the breached gate.
Minalan’s breath hitched. He understood. The fluorescent lights of the lecture hall seemed to buzz louder. He angled his phone below the desk, heart hammering against his ribs. A quick, covert adjustment. The click of the camera was silent. He took two, the second a closer shot, the image stark and unambiguous in the cold light from the window. He sent it without typing a word.
The bubble with the photo showed Delivered. Then, a moment later, Read. A full minute passed. The tension coiled in his gut.
Professor Davies: Very good.A proper vessel. No leaks. It looks… comfortably full. Well-read.
Professor Davies: Does it feel different today? Knowing what’s inside, what you’re keeping for me?
Minalan shifted in his hard plastic seat, a flush creeping up his neck. It did feel different. A persistent, low hum of awareness, a secret that marked his every movement.
Minalan: Yes.
Professor Davies: Describe it. One sentence.
Minalan: Like a tattoo no one can see.
Professor Davies: Excellent. We’ll add to the collection. After your chemistry lab.
The texts continued, a sporadic, electric current beneath the mundanity of his day.
Professor Davies: Sappho’s fragments. The sensation of ‘cold sweat’ and ‘trembling.’ Physical or emotional collapse?
Minalan: There’s no difference in it. It’s the same collapse.
Professor Davies: Prove it. Find a private moment. Touch the skin beside your throat. Tell me if it’s cold. Tell me if you’re trembling.
In a deserted stairwell between classes, Minalan obeyed. His fingers found his pulse, wild and rabbit-fast. The skin was fever-warm, not cold.
Minalan: Not cold. Trembling, though.Inside.
Professor Davies: The truth is often internalized. Keep Foucault handy for your 3 p.m. Return to me.
The final text came just after six, as Minalan pushed a tray of half-eaten cafeteria pasta around his plate.
Professor Davies: The Song of Solomon. ‘My beloved put his hand by the latch of the door, and my heart yearned for him.’ Yearning is an ache. A vacancy waiting to be filled again.
Professor Davies: Is there an ache?
Minalan: Yes.
Professor Davies: Show me. I want to see the yearning. The full, lovely proof of your good work today.
This required more discretion. Minalan abandoned his tray and walked quickly back to his empty dorm room. His roommate was at band practice. The silence was absolute. He didn’t turn on the main light, using the gray dusk filtering through the window.
He understood the assignment now. It wasn’t just the visual evidence. It was the presentation.The submission. He positioned himself, thinking of the line, of the hand on the latch. He thought of the look on Davies’s face in the firelight. He took the picture.
He sent it. The pale curve of his back, the dark shadow of the rug from the study still faintly visible on his skin, the offered proof of his obedience. It was raw. It was exactly what was asked for.
The response was immediate.
Professor Davies: Perfect. You’ve curated yourself beautifully. The ache is evident. We’ll remedy it.
Professor Davies: My office. 8 p.m. Don’t be late. And don’t… empty the collection. I want to add to it.
The ache deepened as 8 p.m. approached, a constant, low thrum beneath his skin that made sitting in his dorm room impossible. Minalan paced, the list of texts burning a loop in his mind. Yearning is an ache. A vacancy. The vacancy felt physical now, a hollowed-out space only one thing could fill. He didn’t touch himself. He followed the instruction, preserving the collection, the proof of his day-long obedience.
The walk to the literature building was a study in anticipation. Every shadow held the echo of Davies’s voice; every distant laugh felt like a mockery of the silence he carried within him. The corridor was darker this time, the only light spilling from the thin gap under Davies’s office door. It pooled on the worn linoleum like a welcome mat.
He didn’t knock. The door swung open silently under his hand, as if expecting him.
The office was a capsule of warm, dim light. The green-shaded lamp was on, but the fireplace was dark, leaving the room in a state of intimate twilight. Davies stood by the bookshelf, his back to the door, tracing a finger along a spine. He didn’t turn immediately.
“Close the door,” he said, his voice a quiet force in the stillness.
The click of the latch was deafening. Minalan leaned against the wood, suddenly unsure of his limbs.
Davies turned then. He was wearing the same charcoal sweater from before, the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He looked like he hadn’t moved all day, a monument to thought. His eyes scanned Minalan, from his scuffed sneakers to his nervous, watchful face. “You preserved the collection.”
It wasn’t a question. Minalan nodded, his throat too tight for words.
“Show me.”
The command was soft, absolute. Minalan’s fingers trembled as he pushed down his jeans and briefs, letting them pool around his ankles. The cool air of the office kissed his skin. He turned, presenting the proof, feeling more exposed than he had even naked in the shower. This was a demonstration. A thesis defense.
He heard Davies’s slow approach, the quiet pad of his shoes on the rug. A warm hand settled on the small of his back, not in comfort, but in assessment. The thumb stroked once, a clinician’s gesture. “Good. No leaks. The vessel is intact. Ready for further study.”
The hand left him. Minalan heard the soft, familiar click of the cap on the bottle of gel. He didn’t turn around. He stared at the grain of the door, his breath coming in shallow pulls.
Davies’s touch returned, slick and cool, circling him, not entering yet. “This is about cumulative knowledge,” he murmured, his breath warm against Minalan’s lower back. “Each addition layers upon the last. Deepens the understanding. You’ve held the first lesson all day. Now we add the second.”
The pressure came, blunt and insistent. Minalan gasped, his forehead pressing against the cool wood of the door. It was easier this time, his body remembering the pattern, but the stretch was still a sharp, breathtaking fullness. Davies didn’t pause. He pushed forward until he was seated fully, a deep, complete possession that drew a choked sound from Minalan’s throat.
“Breathe,” Davies commanded, his own voice strained with control. “Let it become part of the archive.”
He began to move, and the rhythm was different. It wasn’t the exploratory discourse of the first time. It was purposeful, relentless, a driven argument. Each thrust was a period, a full stop driving the point deeper. Davies’s hands gripped his hips, fingers digging in, holding him in place for the relentless pace.
“This,” Davies gritted out, “is the praise you earn. Not with words. With this. With your willingness to be opened. Again. And again.”
Minalan’s mind fractured into pure sensation. The burn had dissolved into a wave of shocking pleasure, each drive hitting that spot that unspooled his coherence. He was babbling, a stream of fragmented pleas and acknowledgments that meant nothing and everything. Davies’s rhythm faltered, his control snapping. He drove in hard, shuddering, his release hot and sudden inside Minalan.
They stood locked together for a moment, Davies’s weight against him, both of them panting against the door. Minalan felt impossibly full, marked.
Davies pulled out slowly. Minalan whimpered at the loss, the sudden emptiness. But Davies’s hands guided him, turning him around, pushing him gently to his knees on the rug. The professor looked down at him, his expression unreadable in the dim light. He was still hard.
“The third lesson,” Davies said, his voice hoarse. “Endurance. The body’s capacity to receive, to accept more than it thought possible. To take its professor raw. To want it.”
He didn’t use more gel. The friction was sharper, more visceral. Minalan cried out as Davies entered him again, the sensitive, spent flesh protesting before yielding. This was faster, more urgent, a brutal, beautiful punctuation to the earlier sentence. Davies’s hands were in his hair, not guiding, but holding, claiming.
“So good,” Davies breathed, his thrusts losing all academic pretense, becoming purely animal. “Taking it like this. Taking every part of it. Raw. Perfect.”
Minalan clung to Davies’s thighs, his face pressed against the rough wool of his sweater. The overstimulation was a white-hot wire, threading pleasure directly into pain. He felt stretched, used, rewritten. Davies groaned, a deep, torn sound, and came again, this second release a weaker pulse that nonetheless washed through Minalan’s oversensitized nerves.
Davies stayed there, buried inside him, for a long minute. Then he carefully withdrew. Minalan slumped forward, his forehead resting on the rug, his body trembling uncontrollably.
He felt Davies kneel beside him. A warm, damp cloth—the same one from before—began to clean him with that same devastating tenderness. The contrast between the ruthless taking and the gentle aftermath was more dizzying than anything else.
“You did so well,” Davies whispered, wiping the sweat from his brow. “You held the first so beautifully. And you took the second. And the third.” He leaned close, his lips near Minalan’s ear. “You took your professor’s cock raw. Every drop. You should be proud of that.”
Minalan turned his head, his vision blurry. Davies’s face was soft, open in a way he hadn’t seen before. It was the look of a man looking at a masterpiece he’d finished.
“Can you stand?”
Minalan shook his head, a weak motion. Davies nodded, understanding. He lifted him, an easy strength, and carried him to the wingback chair. He settled into it, pulling Minalan onto his lap, wrapping him in a thick, wool blanket that smelled of pipe smoke and old books. Minalan buried his face in Davies’s neck, breathing him in.
They sat in silence, the only sound their slowing heartbeats. Davies’s hand stroked his back, steady and calm.
After a while, Davies spoke, his voice a low rumble Minalan felt in his bones. “The Song of Solomon. ‘I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.’” He paused, letting the words hang. “It’s a mutual possession, Minalan. You have my mark. And I…” He trailed off, his fingers tracing the line of Minalan’s spine. “I have your remarkable surrender.”
He shifted, reaching for a notepad on the side table. He scribbled something, tore off the sheet, and tucked it into Minalan’s limp hand.
“Your next reading. We’ll discuss it Wednesday. After your philosophy seminar.”
Minalan didn’t look at the paper. He just clenched it in his fist, a token, a promise. The ache was gone, replaced by a deep, sore fullness that felt like truth. He knew, with a certainty that terrified him, that he would walk into this office again and again. To be filled. To be read. To be authored.
Davies helped him dress, his movements slow and deliberate. When Minalan was at the door, leaning against the frame for support, Davies stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“Look at me.”
Minalan did.
Davies’s eyes were dark, serious. “This stays here. This room. This truth. It’s ours. Understood?”
Minalan nodded. It was the easiest thing he’d ever agreed to.
The walk back was a dream. His body felt heavy, liquid, each step a reminder of the lessons inscribed into his flesh. He unfolded the paper in the elevator. It wasn’t a list of texts this time. It was a single line, in Davies’s precise handwriting:
Ovid: ‘Metamorphoses’ (Selections). Consider the moment the transformation becomes irreversible.