Office Hours

The last chapter! But I have a lot more in mind for Dr. Michaels and Jason. If you want a follow-up series, let me know, and it just might happen...

*****

With less than three weeks left in the semester, Dr. Michaels found she could only think about Jason.

It was horribly distracting, considering she had mountains of papers and projects to grade and a line practically around the corner of students hoping for a moment of her time during office hours.

But through it all, that silly shaggy-headed face simply refused to escape her mind.

She wanted another night with him, an evening to set things right after they had nearly gone so wrong. So Michaels went about setting it all up—the perfect evening. She rented a copy of District 9 from the campus library, to be watched while Jason gave her a massage. And while he rubbed her, she would talk about whatever boring, nerdy thing he felt like talking about. Even photography. Honestly, the kid was pretty damn adorable when he got going on the subject. It was one of the few things he was fully competent in, and he knew it, and Dr. Michaels loved that kind of confidence firing up her pet.

And maybe...maybe she would try making Jason dinner. Surely she could handle some spaghetti, bread, a salad. It gave Michaels an odd, warm buzz to think of feeding Jason, watching him relish food that she had prepared. The silly boy cooked for her all the time, but he never made enough to eat himself. Sure, she often enjoyed feeding him scraps of her own dinner by hand as he knelt at her feet, but that was hardly the same thing.

Yes, a spaghetti dinner, followed by a massage. And once Michaels' muscles were relaxed, she would slowly feed him frosting for dessert, coating her fingers with whipped chocolate and having the boy suck them clean one at a time while they watched the movie together. And then she would nibble the kid's neck all the way to the bedroom and fuck him silly.

Yes. Lovely. Perfect.

Dr. Michaels waited as long as she could, hoping to make it to the weekend but ultimately caving in on Thursday.

Michaels went through the usual rituals, cleaning her teeth and fixing her hair, slipping into her lavender robe and spritzing herself with Lemon Rose. Yet she soon followed this routine by chopping some tomatoes, bell peppers, and cucumbers over a huge bowl of lettuce and a put stockpot of salted, oiled water on to boil. She already had twin tubes of ground turkey and spicy sausage thawed on the counter and ready to brown up for a sauce. Jason would love that.

Finally, with all the pieces in place, Dr. Michaels sauntered into the center of her living room and slammed her foot down three times. She hopped over to the door, smoothing the robe and opening it a little around her chest, and began the count.

Twenty seconds. The boy was never that fast, but she could hope.

Forty seconds. Nearing the average time, but she could forgive a little tardiness.

A minute.

Two.

Five.

Michaels stomped again, a good half dozen times.

Nine.

Where the fuck was he? Michaels knew he was home! He had to be. Thursday was the kid's designated study night, the evening when he always did his best to mop up his homework so he could devote the weekend to her.

At last, over twelve minutes after the initial stomps, a crisp series of raps issued against Michaels' door. She took several deep, frustrated breaths, counted to ten, and opened the door.

"Jason!" she chirped in a parody of her own voice. "What can I do for you?"

"I just need to ask you about something important, Doctor," said her pet. "Do you have a moment?"

"Of course! Come on in."

Dr. Michaels managed to close the door without slamming it, but immediately yanked Jason's head down near her waist by the hair as soon as the latched clicked.

"What the hell do you think you're playing at, you little fuck toy?" Michaels hissed into the boy's ear.

Jason cupped his big, warm hand over the fist wrenching his hair and whispered, "May I speak to you for a moment, Ma'am?"

Michaels growled, but backed off the boy, allowing him to stand up. And as he did, her breath caught. Jason was dressed as she'd never seen before. A white button-up tucked into tight khakis, a trendy olive green jacket. Shiny black loafers. Loafers! Where had he been hiding those all this time?

Since when did he know how to look like an actual man?

Michaels found she was speechless. She was staring—ogling even. Just look at him! Look at how gorgeous he was when he suddenly wasn't a little boy.

And then he ruined it. Just like Jason always ruined everything.

"I'm so sorry," he said. "I can't be with you tonight, Ma'am. Not right now."

Michaels was almost too appalled to speak, and when she did it was hardly more than a whisper. "What do you mean, you can't be with me? You can't?" She pinched the boy's cheek hard and yanked him about side to side for a moment. "You won't, is what you mean. Why won't you? What's suddenly so damn important that you leave me waiting around for twelve minutes only to defy me?"

"Please, Ma'am," Jason said calmly, sweeping the hand gripping his face away with a warm, gentle grip. "I'm not trying to be defiant or hurtful or anything like that. Just listen to me for a sec..." Michaels huffed and glared into the pets eyes, but stayed both her tongue and hands from putting the kid in his place for the time being.

"I'm about to go out for a few hours," Jason said patiently. "Today is Lindsay's birthday. Her twentieth. It's a big deal, and I can't miss it." He sighed and cast his eyes to the side. "She's my best friend."

That stung far more than it should have. Michaels felt ice bloom throughout her body from her stomach. She looked Jason up and down, his splendid body in splendid clothes. Not a boy at all, really. Certainly not a pet. She lowered her face and took in every inch except his face.

"You really are fucking her," she spat, folding her her arms over her chest. "Or you're trying to, anyway."

Jason slammed his foot against the floor. "Oh, for Chrissakes, Doctor!" he bellowed, smacking his hands against his temples. "How could you think of that of me? Me?! At this point?! How could you think that I would give myself to anyone but you?" Michaels averted her eyes and took a step back. "I've offered every little scrap of myself to you, and you still think I don't belong to you? That I would stray just because I could?"

Jason was crying. Michaels still couldn't look at his face, but she knew he was crying.

"I'm sorry," he breathed after a moment. "That wasn't..." Jason stepped forward and caressed Michaels shoulder. "Come with us, Ma'am. Please? Just for a little-"

"No!" Michaels shouted, shrugging away.

Jason took a calm breath. "Just for a little bit, Ma'am. Why not? Just come have a cup of coffee with us. Give twenty minutes of your time. It would mean everything to Lindsay. She worships you!" Again, the big, strong hand stroking her shoulder. And quietly, almost a whisper, "It would mean everything to me. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

Michaels snarled and once again backed away from Jason's touch. "Just strip already!" she wailed in a voice that was thin, desperate, and not at all her own. "Shut up! Just shut up and strip, you pathetic loser!"

Jason shook his head.

"I love you, Ma'am. I love you so much that it makes me cry sometimes. I love the abuse and humiliation and torture—god, it gets me off so hard! So fucking hard!"

"But it's not enough," Michaels filled in, meeting Jason's gaze at last.

Jason averted his eyes and nodded. "We've been doing this for a long time now, Ma'am, playing this messed up game. And honestly? I don't want to stop playing. Not ever. Not as long as I live. But I want more. I want the real Doctor Michaels you let slip sometimes, the one who likes to chat and joke and be a little silly. The one who lives to teach and can hardly conceal her love for her students."

"That person isn't real!" Michaels argued. "You just wish she was! You have you're little crush on me and impose what you want to see!"

Jason shook his head, smiling a small smile. "No. It's so much more true than you think, and that's what really breaks my heart. You're so deep in your shell that you can't even see it anymore. You're a wonderful person. A kind person. You could be so goddamn happy if you stopped forcing yourself to be miserable."

"Enough!" Michaels yelled, hitting Jason hard across the face, hitting him like someone she hated and not someone she was playing games with. "Enough. Just leave." She hit him again. "Leave! Get out!"

Jason rubbed his stung cheek, but nodded grimly and complied, slipping backwards through the door with a murmured, "Yes, Ma'am..."

2

First thing the next morning, Dr. Michaels sent an email to all her students informing them that office hours were closed. It was a cruel move given the looming finals and the many final projects that the many kids were desperate for a final conference on, but Michaels just couldn't take any more. Not now. Not yet. She just couldn't stand to be so damn needed by those awful little children. Couldn't stand to fail to be what they needed.

Jason didn't even try to defy her on this.

Dr. Michaels decided to try again to be an adult and managed to have lunch with the a cluster of faculty that afternoon, scooting into the crowded table next to Ted Barlows, who gave her a quick, tight smile before becoming extremely interested in the olives atop his salad. Michaels rolled her eyes. Such a sweet, dumb, sad man. She could almost kiss him, but neither of them would truly appreciate it. She patted his arm and flashed a smile of her own that said he had nothing to be afraid of.

The conversation was dull as ever, a tossed salad of gripes over schedules, paychecks, and, of course, the Youth of Today. Michaels nodded along absently as she picked at her pasta salad, tossing out "Mmhmm"s and "I know, right?"s where appropriate. These people weren't idiots. They were in fact some of the brightest minds in the city, the state. Maybe even the country. There were thousands of pages of books and essays between them. And yet here and now, all they could bring themselves to discuss was the truncated Christmas holiday and the how Kids These Days would rather sext than read a damn book (which Michaels knew was untrue, and downright insulting to the dozens of kids who gushed every day at her about their love for Austen, Chopin, Fitzgerald, and Murakami).

Michaels only perked up when she heard Professor Kirkman, the leering comparative religions teacher, slip into the low, sleazy tone he thought was flirtatious, declaring, "Of course, these idiots might have paid attention once or twice this semester if I had worn more tight, blue blouses..."

He whispered, but it was the kind of whisper that was loud and sharp and meant to be heard by the whole table.

Michaels bristled, but quickly became confused. She wasn't wearing blue...

Only then did Dr. Michaels notice the plump, blond creature to her left. She was somehow even younger than Michaels, and was avoiding Kirkman's eyes as she picked tiny pieces of green tortilla from her chicken wrap. Her robin blue blouse was stretched tight across her generous chest, and was stained near the collar with an embarrassing blotch of ranch. Michaels didn't know the girl's name. She was a recent hire, a part time public speaking professor, or maybe just a tutor.

It didn't matter. Either way, Dr. Michaels rested a hand on the girl's wrist and whispered, loud enough for the whole table to hear, "Don't worry, students don't really care about your clothes. They just don't pay attention to sexist assholes no matter what."

The blond creature was confused for a moment. Then her features twisted with mirth and she barked a loud, wicked laugh that Michaels was too glad to mimic. Neither of them deigned to give the shamed Professor Kirkman a glance. He wasn't worth it.

It was good to laugh, but the good wouldn't last. Not when the doldrum of class after class, hour after hour, came and seemed to grind away pieces of her as they went.

Not when Jason wasn't speaking to her.

"Lindsay!" Michaels found herself hissing aloud at the old oak where as she had lunch on a warm, slightly sticky afternoon the Friday after her fight with Jason. A gas station sandwich and a can of coffee. She felt famished without Jason's loving sacked lunches.

"Lindsay!"

Michaels worked hard. She was a good woman. Was it so wrong that she liked to play with a younger boy in her free time? Even if the play was a bit brutal and nasty? He loved her, and she...well, she had a hard time imagining her life without her adorable little pet. They had earned what they were. It was pretty fucked up, but they had earned it, and they both loved it, and how dare Lindsay try to steal Michaels' boyfriend!

Michaels' breath caught as she gazed at the cloudless skies just above the swaying boughs of her beloved tree.

...Boyfriend?

Where had that word come from?

Her chest was so tight it felt like it had turned to stone, and only the whooshing pant in her ears told her she was still breathing. Her eyes grew wide and hot.

A mental slip of the tongue. That was all. She was tired and hungry. Jason wasn't...that. Not that! Of course not! Jason could never be...that. Of course not. Ridiculous. There were countless reasons why it was impossible. Countless.

Countless reasons why Jason could never be her boyfriend.

Maybe they'd had sex at least fifty thousand times. Maybe he was the only person she ever really had conversations with. Maybe he was sweet and beautiful and made her laugh and...and...

And it was impossible for countless reasons.

Dr. Michaels finished out the week in a daze.

By Sunday afternoon she was slumped over her cheap desk, peering out the window at the iron table near the woods that had brought her so much misery.

She decided to go to bed early, knowing sleep would elude her no matter when she tried to find it.

Michaels lay in bed for what felt like hours, and probably was. She masturbated with her trusty vibrator off and on, staring and ceiling and begging her twitching clit to blank out her mind once and for all.

But instead, Michaels thought of the early days she had spent with Jason, when they were still exploring one another's bodies and experimenting with the nature of their relationship. Michaels had liked to use a ruler back then, an average issue foot of stiff wood that she used to beat Jason senseless. It was what she had used while training the boy to eat pussy properly. Almost every day for weeks she smacked at the kid's ass, back, and face with the ruler until he finally knew just how to please her.

Michaels was now often quick to forget that she and Jason were only together for about a month before he left to spend a large chunk of the summer at home with his family. Only a month, but a month in which she'd had more sex than in a year with any previous boyfriend, and done things with her body and to the body of her submissive young lover that she had thought only belonged in fantasy.

She hadn't even missed him that summer, that long six weeks they were apart. He had emailed her every day, long letters declaring his love and devotion that she had mostly skimmed over. A couple of times she had commanded him to send her nasty pictures of himself, naked and splayed and gripping the hard, young prick that now belonged to her.

But she had never really missed him. Him, the boy, the person. The man.

Now, on the verge of semester's end, Michaels knew that Jason was poised to go away for at least a week for the December holidays, and it just crushed her. One week! A week that hadn't even come yet and she was crushed!

Michaels heart started pounding, no thanks to the vibrator between her legs.

She cast away the toy, sitting straight up in bed and, hardly in control of her body, starting hurling books from her nightstand at the bedroom floor. Three of them, three thick tomes slamming into the floor and scattering the careful pages of loose notes that Dr. Michaels had tucked between their pages.

Michaels didn't know what she expected. Just what she hoped.

And against all hope and expectation, a soft knock came at her door faster than she had thought possible.

Michaels couldn't move, suddenly paralyzed and self conscious of her baggy t-shirt and gym shorts.

The knock came again, followed soon by her front door opening and closing.

"Ma'am?" came a soft, nervous call that sent Michaels' stomach fluttering.

Rustling. The careful padding of bare feet on cheap apartment carpeting.

And there he was, standing in the doorway of her bedroom. Naked and lean, his muscles rendered stark by shadow. Half hard, the cock that was her own private toy hanging long between his naked thighs.

He was so beautiful, and so goddamn young.

Suddenly Michaels regretted it. Regretted everything. Not just throwing the books, not just the fight. Everything. Every game, every belting, every massage, every fuck, every kiss...it had all been such a horrible mistake.

Michaels sobbed and threw herself at her bed.

And there was a rapid patter of feet on carpet, and suddenly the springs of Michaels' bed were groaning, and the whole, naked mass of Jason was wriggling in under the covers and worming his way against her body.

"Oh, what the fuck!" Michaels shrieked. "The hell do you think you're doing, you pathetic, desperate little piece of worthless shit?! Did I say you could get on the bed? Did I?"

Jason simply snuggled against her, smothering his face into the curve of her neck.

Michaels continued to rant and rage at the boy even as her arms snaked around to press him tighter against her. Soon she found herself muttering bitter insults against Jason's scalp as she buried her face into his soft coconut hair. And in minutes, she drifted off into the deepest, sweetest sleep she had ever known.

3

Dr. Michaels woke up warm and ecstatically happy. The light filtering in through the window above the bed was the soft gray of a cool, cloudy sky. Michaels felt as though she had slept for a thousand peaceful years.

Jason was still in her bed, still in Michaels' arms, snoring lightly with his face half buried in her armpit, their legs twisted together in an intimate knot.

Michaels stared at Jason, stared at his sweet sleeping face and stroked his cheek for what felt like an hour, and probably was. She stared and stroked, and as she did, something inside her broke.

Just like the first time she had seen him in her class and realized that her best friend was a silly little boy. Just like when that silly little boy had kissed her in her own office and drove her to put him back in his place forevermore.

Something had broken, and could never be put back together the same way.

Dr. Michaels stroked the boy's cheek and nuzzled his forehead, and prayed she could just have this forever—could just fucking have this, and the gorgeous little creature in her arms would never awaken. They could just be like this forever, bodies entwined, the boy worshiping her every essence even as he slept, and she free to kiss and stroke and squeeze him with abandon, free from any, every, and all scrutiny and judgment. This, now, as the child slept in her arms, was a kind of paradise.

And of course, he had to ruin it by waking up.

She couldn't look at his open, sleepy eyes. She couldn't.

Dr. Michaels squeezed her pet tight, gave him a long, lingering kiss on the ear, then smacked and kicked him until he was out of her bed, out of her room, and out of her apartment.

She called in sick on Monday. And Tuesday. And Wednesday.

Michaels was a zombie in her own apartment, drifting from the couch to the kitchen to the bathroom, and finally to her bed for a long, sleepless night. All the while she felt as though she were dragging around a chest full of broken glass, heavy, cumbersome, and endlessly eviscerating. It was just too much, what she had lost. Lost by gaining and being denied.