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Howdy!

As always, comments, speculations, and suggestions more than welcome--the more the merrier! You can follow me on twitter (@Orvayn) to keep up with my antics.

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Jump forward. Five months later the renewal of spring has blossomed into the decay of fall, and the stress of finals has morphed into an anxious anticipation for junior year.

Unlike many courses feared and loathed by poltical science and engineering majors, galactic astrophysics lived up to its reputation. Its online grade distribution corroborated the common perception of the course as hard as fuck, and no one scientifically or mathematically illiterate took this course. And somewhat worse was the word around the department, that this was the professor's first time teaching it. Nobody knew anything about the guy but his name: one Dr. Mitchel, member of the Batavia physics department for all of one year.

So it was with a bit of a nervous flutter in his stomach that Jake walked into room 202. A silly smile, placed on his muzzle by one of Joel's corny jokes, was slowly fading from his muzzle, carrying with it his mirth but not the excited, anxious energy that had been building deep within him about this class.

He sat beside Joel, the only coyote he'd ever known, neither too close nor too far from the front-row seats of the classroom. Ten masochistic students in all had signed up to have their GPA butchered by this course, and he gave each familiar face a nod.

In total, he was expecting nine familiar faces. He got ten.

The professor was a muscular, portly rottweiler who looked around thirty and carried with him a deep, earthy aroma. Across his shoulder was a leather messenger bag, stuffed with various loose articles, and across the bridge of his nose was a pair of narrow-rim spectacles.

At first, Jake couldn't place where he'd seen the male before. It wasn't he heard the male's grainy baritone ring out that he got it:

"I'm Dr. Sean Mitchel," rottweiler said, leaning over the demo bar that separated himself from the rest of the classroom. Deep brown eyes met his--the same ones Jake had once looked into as his throat protested about the amount of thick, delicious meat he tried to cram into it. "And welcome to galactic astrophysics."

Fuck.

No, seriously: fuck. He half-expected Ashton Kutcher to walk in the door any second. This couldn't be real--it was like some cheap, stupid plotline concocted by a dumb blowhard writer for a god-awful sitcom so he could lure people in with sex and snare them via plot.

It was like a crazy, lucid dream too embarrassing to recount to friends, one in which the most unlikely elements are senselessly juxtaposed into something downright stupid. Because surely the big dog was too muscular to be a professor. Surely he was too damn attractive--professors weren't supposed to be the subject of wet dreams, after all. And surely he was too damn real--professors didn't have emotions quite like normal human beings, right? Surely all they thought about was research and marking papers up in ugly, red strokes, and they surely didn't go to bars to pick up young gay college students. But no matter how much this just had to be a dream, no amount of self-pinching could dispel the illusion and place him back in his bed.

It was impossible to hold the rottweiler's eyes. He looked down, and groaned.

"Hey, what's up?"

His eyes shifted over to Joel. The coyote leaned comically over the table so he could look at the dingo's face. "I'm not feeling too good," he muttered.

"Come on. It won't be that bad."

He opened his mouth to ask the coyote what he meant, but noticed a silence where before there'd been the professor's baritone going over the syllabus. He looked up and saw the professor looking at him. "Boys? Question?"

"Ah." When Jake's throat failed and could only croak, Joel was quick to speak. "We've got it. Thanks, though."

"Good." The professor's gaze lingered, though. "Oh! Ah..." He turned to the sheaf of papers on the table, and sifted through two of them. "...hm. Ah, Murray, is it?" Jake didn't have the balls to respond. He knew the professor had big balls, but damn, he had balls to be able to look and speak at Jake as if nothing had happened between them. "I believe there's an administrative issue with your prereqs. See me after class?"

"Uh, yeah." Jake nodded. He once more tried to meet the rottweiler's eyes and hold them for as long as he could. This time, it was around a femtosecond--a billionth of a millionth of a second.

He'd counted on today being boring. After all, the first day of classes usually amounted to nothing more than professors going over the syllabi, as if the students were incapable of reading them on their own, and professors warning students about the difficulty of their class, as if students didn't hear the same thing from every single goddam professor they had.

When the professor first stepped in, the class had seemed to drag, as if forcing Jake to spend as much time in his awkward position as he could. But once the professor asked to meet after class--never had a first class meeting passed so quickly. Jake couldn't keep himself still: his leg was constantly shaking, and his persistent tapping on the desk drew a few glares from Joel, beside him.

"Alright, class," the rottweiler said, placing his chalk back in the tray and wiping his paw clean of the dust. "The first assignment is posted on blackboard, due in a week. Mostly review of mathematical methods, but there are a few problems on the material we'll cover Thursday, and one problem for the honors section." His eyes gravitated towards Jake, whose nervous twitches doubled.

After class, he lingered behind, prolonging the act of packing away his books so that he rose from his desk after the last of his classmates had already quit the room.

He made eye contact with a spot on the blackboard behind Sean--no, Dr. Mitchel. "You wanted to see me, professor?"

"Yes."

The professor was still looking down at his papers. To an onlooker, he would appear to be busy, and somewhat annoyed at having to take valuable time out of his day to speak to the dingo, a lowly undergraduate, about a foolish administrative error, when he could instead be working on his research. But even after five month's time and only a single day's sample size, Jake knew better. He'd seen that muzzle convulse in pleasure; squint in curious, cautious interest; and frown in what Jake now knew as coincidential surprise.

Jake saw what no other student would've seen. He saw the betraying twitch of the rottweiler's mouth. For just a single fraction of a second--maybe a picosecond, a millionth of a millionth of a second--he saw a glimpse of emotion behind the cold, professional mask. The professor cleared his throat and frowned, perhaps realizing his mistake. "Your prereqs are fine. I imagine you know the real reason why we're speaking."

Cold. Professional. Devoid of the warmth, life, and passion Jake had once heard. He almost thought it a shame.

Jake's entire body felt the pounding of his heart. It thumped in his ears so loudly he was sure the professor could even hear it. "Yes. Of course."

The rottweiler stacked his papers by banging them against the tabletop, and then slipped them back into his folder. "Yes, well. I'm not the type to be this forward, usually, but I think it would be a mutual benefit for us to have this discussion."

A flood of feelings five months old resurged. The inexplicable spark of interest, wondering just who the intelligent older male was. The sinking feeling in his stomach that morning, when he'd gotten up and felt as if he'd done something wrong when he couldn't get a number from the guy. The throbbing in his pants and the sheet-clenching orgasm he really did not want to think about right now.

"Of course." Jake swalloed, rested his weight on one foot, and leaned partially onto the counter. He felt smaller than he remembered, looking up at the tall canine. Did he remember the rottweiler being quite this tall? He didn't look at all like a professor. "Look, I'm sorry about--"

But the rottweiler waved a dismissive paw. "There's no sense in an apology. Unprofessional behavior is expected in an unprofessional environment. My only concern is that, I hope despite said unprofessional behavior, we will still be able to maintain a degree of profesionalism here."

Jake nodded. His mind wrapped itself around the rottweiler's phrasing and he wondered if the male would object to more unprofessional behavior in another unprofessional environment--and then he hated himself for thinking that, because Dr. Mitchel was his professor, dammit. "Of course. And, in case you're wondering: no, nobody else knows about it, and I don't plan on sharing. Hell, Joel's the only one who even knows I'm..." It felt wrong even saying the word 'gay' in presence of a professor. "You know. Since I live with him."

"Good." Sean placed his folder back inside his bag and crossed his bulky arms over his chest. "Now, unless there's anything else you need from me, I'll be on my way."

Jump back five months. The calm look on the rottweiler's muzzle had matched the smooth words that veiled an open invitation. Got any plans?

His tongue wagged despite his inhibitions. "Is there anything you need from me?" The words were so nervous they didn't even sound solicious. His ears clung to his skull. "No, no, forget I ever said that."

The professor, though, seemed amused--at least, amused enough that his lips curled into a grin that showed off the sharp teeth that had once pricked against Jake's neck, leaving a blossom of fire their wake. "You're as welcome to office visits as the rest of the class. I'd just rather things not be awkward. Your education is the most important thing to you, right now." Throughout that, Jake had been thinking: Yes, yes. I know. I have a 4.0, and I'm doing research. The dog lifted his chin. "But to be honest, I am quite looking forward to teaching you."

Huh. Now that was something the dingo had never heard before. He raised an eyebrow. "Hm. Alright. Well, I've been looking forward to this class ever since I started my concentration, so..."

The rottweiler grinned. "Good for all parties involved. I'll see you in class Thursday, then."

"Yeah."

They shared another small smile, the smile a teacher and student shared, before Jake headed towards the door. Odd, his head played on repeat. Odd.

Out of curiosity, as he headed back to the lounge, he navigated to Blackboard on his phone and opened the PDF that contained the homework assignment for next week. He was curious, after all, just how much this course lived up to its reputation of absurd difficulty, and how difficult Dr. Mitchel's section of it would be.

His eyes widened as he looked down the list. Ten problems, most of which were split into parts a, b, c, etc. He imagined each of them would take at least an hour. And when his eyes locked onto the honors problem... shit.

You're as welcome to office visits as the rest of the class. I am quite looking forward to teaching you. As if the expectation was that Jake would need office visits.

Jake vowed that he'd solve the problems on his own. No office visits. No being alone in the same room behind a closed door with Sean--Dr Mitchel--if he could help it.

But this was going to be one hell of a challenge.

"Hey, man." A rough paw clapped him on the shoulder. Joel. "Coming to lab?"

Junior lab. Big boy lab. The other monster of a class on his schedule. Not even counting mechanics, or electromagnetics, or mathematical methods, or weekly lecture, or weekly colloquium. Fuck, this semester was going to suck.

The dingo pocketed his phone. He hoped he'd be able to pay attention. "Yeah. Let's go."

Beside him, Joel bitched about his schedule, but Jake's hardly listened, his thoughts drifting back to Dr. Sean Mitchell. No office visits. No office visits. You're good enough to figure this assignment out on your own.