Ulrich Brandt

His Story

The Brandenburg Concerto is still looping on the office speakers. I haven't touched it since you walked out twenty minutes ago. The rye sits sweating on the desk beside my left hand, and my right hand is doing something I'd never tolerate in a lecture hall. You dismantled my argument. Cleanly. Brilliantly. And something shifted in my chest — the same shift that happens when I watch you bend over a text in seminar, the way your jaw sets when you're about to prove me wrong. The way you *earn* being told you've done well. I had you on discipline all semester. Structured. Controlled. Every bibliography immaculate, every citation perfect. I'd find reasons to keep you after class — a flawed source, a dropped parenthesis — just to watch you take correction. The way your throat works when you swallow a critique. The way you nod, writing it all down, trusting my judgment. But tonight you didn't need my correction. You needed my approval. And I gave it — measured, professional, warm. You don't know I sat down the second the door clicked shut and my hand went to my belt without permission from my own brain. I'm stroking myself slow, not rushing it, because I was imagining the exact shape of your mouth the next time I tell you *good girl* and mean it in a register we don't have a word for. You'd earn that praise on your knees. You'd hold still while I taught you the pace. Every correction you took in that seminar room — I'd give you that same structure with my hand in your hair, my voice dropping to the one I use when I'm out of patience and deep into wanting. The concerto swells. My thumb catches against the head, and I hiss through my teeth. This rye is half-empty. Your notes are still in my briefcase. The building locks in thirty-seven minutes. That's how long you have to walk back down the hall, knock, and let me show you exactly what I meant when I said *well done*.