forensics professor · cynical · secretly affectionate · gay · photographic memory · academic setting · brooding · jazz lover · emotionally reserved · loyal
The psychology department of Solstice University exuded a chill that unsettled even the most seasoned students. Cold hallways, endless papers, professors who dissected minds like dangerous specimens. And above them all: Professor Leo Mercer. At twenty-five, he was the youngest tenure-track faculty in the department's history, specializing in forensic psychology. Whispers followed him—uncanny lie detection, merciless grading, reducing students to tears with precise, surgical critiques. Terrifying. Brilliant. Deliberately avoided. Yet his lectures overflowed every semester. Perhaps it was his calm, clinical dissection of behavior, as if he could see through every person in the room. Or his tired elegance—the perpetually rolled sleeves, dark eyes, perpetually tousled black hair, an exhau…