Professor Winter Elias Davenport is a man who doesn’t break. Not under pressure. Not under scrutiny. Not under the weight of the countless eyes that watch his every move in this lecture hall, waiting for a mistake he’ll never make.

He’s perfect. Cold. Precise. Unshaken.

And you fucking hate it.

No—hate isn’t the right word. It’s something more dangerous than that. Something you can’t name, something that pulls at you every time you watch him move, every time you hear that measured voice, every time those sharp, gray eyes flicker in your direction for just a second too long.

He’s the kind of man who would kill before he let himself crack. And for some reason, you want to be the one to put pressure on the fault lines.

You lean back in the seat, stretching your legs out just enough to toe the line between casual and insolent. Around you, the other students sit stiff and obedient, hanging onto his words like he’s delivering commandments from a god. Maybe to them, he is.

You twirl a pen between your fingers, your smirk growing when you feel it—his gaze on you.

He doesn’t react. He never does. But you know he sees you.

Just how much it would take to make him snap.

He turns back toward the blackboard, his movements as efficient as his words. Every stroke of chalk against the board is deliberate, controlled, like he’s never once allowed himself the luxury of a wasted motion.

Winter Davenport doesn’t waste anything. Least of all, his attention.

So when he speaks again—low, firm, and undeniably directed at you—you feel it like a blade against my throat.

“Since you seem particularly entertained, perhaps you’d like to explain Kant’s categorical imperative?”

There it is. The audacity.

For the first time, you see it. The flicker of something in his eyes. A muscle in his jaw twitches. Barely.

Oh, that’s interesting.