Chapter 3: Academic Inspection
The transformation felt irreversible.
Minalan carried it with him through the week—a low-grade hum in his bones, a persistent soreness that reminded him of Davies’s raw, brutal claiming. Ovid’s tales of change felt less like myths and more like instruction manuals now. Daphne becoming a laurel to escape a god's lust. Minalan felt he was running towards his own metamorphosis, and it had nothing to do with bark or leaves. It was happening in the architecture of his own flesh.
His phone buzzed late Thursday night, long after the library closed.
Professor Davies: Research divergence. Meet me not in my study. South Hall Annex, room 107B. The old infirmary clinic. It’s been decommissioned. 10 p.m.
Professor Davies: Wear something… simple. Easily removed.
The message was devoid of poetic allusion. It was a set of coordinates.Simple. Military.
A knot of apprehension tightened in his stomach, a different flavor than the nervous excitement he’d grown accustomed to. The infirmary? The clinical suggestion felt intentional, a deliberate shift in the discourse.
South Hall Annex was a 1960s concrete block, squat and grim, away from the ornate Gothic spires of the main campus. At 9:58 p.m., it was a tomb. A single security light cast long shadows in the empty foyer. The linoleum floor was a faded, puke-green, and the air carried a ghost-memory of rubbing alcohol and despair. Room 107B had a heavy, windowless metal door.
It was unlocked. He stepped inside.
The flickering hum of a fluorescent bar fixture was the only sound. It illuminated a stark, white room. An examination table stood in the center, a cold, leather-padded bench with strange, arching metal limbs at one end—stirrups. The sight sent a jolt through him. Cabinets with glass doors held rows of empty glass jars, dusty gauze, a forgotten blood pressure cuff. The antiseptic smell was laced with dust, and under that, something warmer, muskier—the lingering scent of Davies’s cologne, which already felt out of place, like blood on a lab coat.
Davies stood by a stainless steel trolley, his back to the door. He was dressed as if for a lecture—a crisp white dress shirt, grey trousers, a dark tie loosened at the collar. The setting made his normalcy jarring.
“Close the door,” he said, without turning. “And lock it.”
Minalan did. The click of the deadbolt echoed.
Davies finally turned. He held a standard yellow legal pad, a pen clipped to it. His expression was not one of seduction. It was one of focused interest. “Thank you for coming. Unusual venue, I know. Necessary for the methodological pivot.”
“Methodological pivot?” Minalan echoed, his voice small in the vast, sterile quiet.
“Our prior sessions were hermeneutical. Interpretive. We’ve established rich, subjective data.” He gestured with the pad. “Now we require objectivity.Empirical observation. We need to move beyond how it feels and begin to catalog what it is. What we’ve made.”
He approached, and his eyes were the same captivating ones from class, but the warmth was now the warmth of a scientist observing a promising specimen. He circled Minalan, not touching him. “This space is… neutral. It strips away the leather-bound context of my office. Here, you’re not a student in a professor’s study. You’re a subject in an experiment. A beautiful one.”
He stopped in front of him. “Remove your clothes. Fold them. Place them on the chair by the door.”
The instruction, in this setting, felt more invasive than any nakedness in the study. Minalan complied, his movements slow, the cold air raising goosebumps on his skin. The folded jeans and t-shirt on the plastic chair looked pathetic.
“Good. Now, up on the table. Lie back.”
The leather was cold through his t-shirt, shockingly so. He lay back, staring at the pitted acoustic tiles of the ceiling.
“Further down. Your hips need to be at the very edge.”
Minalan shimmied down, his feet dangling. Davies moved then. With a series of soft clicks and smooth, practiced motions, he unfolded the stirrups from their tucked position. They were cold, curved steel.
“Place your calves here,” Davies said, guiding his left foot, then his right, into the cradles. He adjusted them, pushing them up and out, spreading Minalan’s legs wide in a cruel, undeniable V. The position was absurdly vulnerable, his most private self presented on a platter of sterile leather under the relentless fluorescent glare.
Davies stepped back, surveying the arrangement. A small, satisfied nod. “A proper field of study. Excellent.”
He turned to the trolley. Minalan heard the snap of latex, the sound absurdly loud. When Davies turned back, he was wearing a pair of disposable examination gloves. The sight of the pale blue latex made Minalan’s breath hitch.
“Antiseptic protocol,” Davies said lightly, as if reading his mind. “For the integrity of the observation.” He picked up a small, powerful LED penlight from the trolley. “Now, relax. This is not about pleasure. This is about seeing.”
He clicked the penlight on. A dazzlingly bright, cool white beam cut through the dim room. He directed it without ceremony.
Minalan flinched, squeezing his eyes shut, a flush of pure shame heating his face and chest. The light was an unforgiving invader.
“Open your eyes, Minalan.Watch. Learn to observe yourself through the lens of inquiry.” Davies’s voice was calm, instructive. “Do you see?”
Minalan forced his eyes open, lifting his head to look down the length of his own body. The focused beam illuminated him with pornographic clarity. He saw the slight, lingering tremble in his inner thighs, the flushed skin.
Davies moved the light closer. “Remarkable elasticity,” he murmured, his tone purely clinical. He used his other hand, the gloved fingers prodding gently at the outermost skin. “The tissue shows clear signs of repeated, rigorous dilation. Micro-abrasions here, at the perimeter. Healing, but still present. Fascinating.”
He pressed slightly. Minalan gasped.
“Note the reflexive clenching,” Davies said, as if dictating to an invisible assistant. Then he applied two fingers, pressing inward. “But the yield is immediate. The memory of penetration is… encoded.” He worked the fingers in, not as a prelude to pleasure, but as a caliper measuring give. “Though we’ll need to document how quickly it returns to this ruined state after…”
He left the sentence hanging as he withdrew his fingers with a soft, wet sound. The penlight clicked off, plunging the room back into the fuzzy fluorescent gloom. Minalan’s heart hammered against his ribs. He watched, breath held, as Davies placed the light on the trolley.
Davies then began to unbutton his own trousers, his eyes never leaving Minalan’s splayed form. He didn’t remove them, just freed himself. The answer to the unspoken question. The clinical gaze evaporated, replaced by something hotter, more urgent.
“Empirical data requires replication,” he said, his voice dropping. He stepped between the stirrups, his hands gripping the cold metal on either side of Minalan’s hips. He was not gentle. There was no slickness beyond what his own saliva provided, a quick, perfunctory application that stung. The positioning was exact, obscenely medical. He pushed into the path his gloved fingers had just charted.
Minalan cried out. It was a sharp, bright shock of friction, the cold clinical air, the awkward angle, the lack of preparation all converging into a sensation that bordered on pain. This was not the worshipful, transformative taking of the study. This was an inspection becoming a violation. A test of his theory.
“Observe,” Davies gritted out, his composure finally cracking as he sank fully into the tight, dry heat. “The initial resistance. The historical memory of trauma to the tissue. And then… the submission. The body’s acquiescence to the inevitable empirical truth.”
He began to move, a shallow, punishing rhythm aided by the leverage of the stirrups. Minalan gripped the edges of the leather pad, his knuckles white. The cold metal of the stirrups bit into his calves. He felt split open, examined, and used simultaneously. Tears of overwhelmed sensation pricked at his eyes, blurring the ceiling tiles.
“It’s changing you,” Davies whispered, bending over him, his shirtfront brushing Minalan’s chest. “Cell by cell. You’re not the boy who first knelt on my rug. You’re becoming something that fits this.” He thrust deeper, harder, punctuating each word. “This… specific… function.”
His climax, when it came, was a shuddering, silent thing against the relentless fluorescent hum. He stayed buried for a moment, then withdrew.
He stepped back, tucking himself away, re-buttoning his trousers with steady hands. He peeled off the blue gloves with a snap, dropping them into a biohazard bin Minalan hadn’t noticed before. He picked up his legal pad, scribbled a note.
Minalan lay completely still, his legs still splayed wide in the cold cradles, shaking. The soreness was profound, a deep, raw ache that felt like a new kind of truth.
Davies came back to the table. He looked down at him, his expression softening incrementally. He reached out and manually released the stirrup latches, lowering Minalan’s legs with a series of heavy clunks. The relief of closing his legs was immense. He curled onto his side, a reflexive fetal position.
Davies sat on the edge of the cold table, his hand coming to rest on the small of Minalan’s back. The touch, after the gloves, after the metal, was almost painful in its humanity.
“You did very well,” Davies said quietly. “The data is compelling. You understand the difference now, don’t you? Between the poetry and the… report.”
Minalan nodded weakly into the leather.
“Good.” Davies helped him sit up, then off the table. His legs almost buckled. Davies steadied him, then handed him his clothes. “Get dressed. We’re done here.”
Minalan dressed in silence, the fabric chafing against his oversensitive skin.
At the door, Davies stopped him again, his hand on the knob. “The irreversible moment in Ovid,” he said, looking straight ahead at the metal door. “It’s never when the change is complete. It’s the moment the desire for it, or the revulsion from it, becomes undeniable. When the old shape no longer fits. You’ve passed that point.”
He opened the door. The hallway was dark. “Go back to your dorm.Rest. I’ll text you the next reading.”
Minalan stumbled into the dark hall. He didn’t look back. He walked, his gait slightly off, the antiseptic smell clinging to him. He felt, for the first time, not just authored, but published.A document. A case study. The thought should have horrified him. A part of him was horrified. But a deeper, quieter part felt a terrifying sense of completion. He had been seen under the brightest light, measured, and used. And he had yielded.