Elizabeth prided herself on having a good eye for talent. She could tell what people were capable of and read them like few others could. Indeed, quite a handful of those whom she had singled out during her time in the CIA had gone on to prove their worth, be it subordinates within the company or politicians from other countries.

Transitioning from the CIA to UVA four years ago had been an abrupt change but to her surprise, she found that much of her trade craft could be used as a professor. Reading people was still useful, for one. Right from the first tutorial, she knew who would be the ones she had to keep an eye on, the ones who would turn in quality essays whether or not they showed up for class and the ones who wouldn't show up for class until the month before the finals.

And then, occasionally, there were the ones she could never quite figure out. Equipped with just her observation skills and no access to intel and profiles, those were the ones who unsettled her the most.

With that cheerful thought, Elizabeth took a deep breath and stepped into her classroom.

The boy in the front corner of the room already had his eye trained on her when she entered. Everyone else glanced up or away from what they were doing to acknowledge her entrance and settle down for class, but that boy seemed like he had been waiting for her arrival intently. Elizabeth resisted a shudder, tamping down the nagging voice in her mind that pointed out how strategic the front corner seat was — out of the way but close to the front, excellent for watching people — or a specific person — and reminding herself that she was dedicated to discussing the politics of a fractured post-Cold War, post-USSR Russian Federation with her group of 21-year-old students for the next hour and a half.

She couldn't quite shake the sense that his gaze was a bit too focused on her, a bit too personal for the next hour and a half, no matter how she tried to convince herself that the hair on her neck was standing due to a cross breeze in the room. Her eyes never once slid to his seat at the corner, carefully trained on whoever was speaking. Thankfully, most of her students liked the class and were eager to speak up which spared her the pain of panning her gaze around the room and urging them to participate.

Though, she thought as she carefully avoided glancing to the side again, being well-liked had its own problems especially when it got out of hand. Her mind dismissed the boy as an intelligent introvert, if a little on the intense side but still she had subconsciously dressed in a long sleeved blouse and cardigan that morning, knowing that he would be in her class. Henry had given her an odd look for it was a warm day in late September, but if Elizabeth was going to ignore the way her skin crawled with unease then she was going to at least hide it from view.

Just in case.

…

"Hey babe," Henry said and pecked her on the cheek when she neared him at their usual lunch spot. "How was your morning?"

"Same old, though this girl in my class thought the Russian constitutional crisis was in 1994 not 1993 and I almost choked," she replied, taking her seat.

Henry's eyes gleamed with mirth. "Oh yes, what a damning mistake, getting your dates off by a year," he replied in mock seriousness. Elizabeth kicked his ankle lightly under the table. "Shut up," she said with a smile tugging at the corner of her lips, "you know factual errors are my pet peeves."

Lunch passed with the familiar, loving banter for which she had come to characterise their interactions on school grounds until a name popped into her mind out of nowhere and her smile froze before fading. Henry, still chuckling from whatever they were talking about a moment ago, had missed the shift in expressions.

"By the way, I just want to check with you, did you ever have a Ray Merchant in your class?"

"Who?" Henry sounded confused by the abrupt switch in topic.

"Ray Merchant. He's a political science major in his senior year."

He frowned. "Not that I recall, no. Why?"

"He's...a little odd. Intense," she clarified at Henry's look of concern though his frown only deepened.

"Is he bothering you?" She could hear him entering his protective mood, his voice hardening.

She shook her head slowly, unconvincingly. Not yet. It might not turn out to be much, anyway. Just a smart, socially awkward boy who was still finding his way in life. They were only a month into the new school year and three of the seven times they've had class, he seemed normal enough. Of course, there were the three other times when he watched her like she was a prey and one time when he was so energetic that he dominated class discussions, much to everyone else's confusion. It was like there were three shades of him — maniacally enthusiastic, normal and stalker-grade creepy. Elizabeth had theories about how that was possible but there was nothing on his declared medical history so she filed them away in her mind.

Henry's phone vibrated on the table, jolting her out of her contemplative mood. "Sorry babe, my seminar starts in ten. I'll see you in the evening," Henry said apologetically, sliding out of their booth and leaning over for a light kiss though he lingered for a moment longer than he usually did, his wariness almost palpable. Elizabeth smiled and waved him off before taking her time to head back to her office. Henry may be worried but Elizabeth wasn't; her husband had the ability to melt all her fears away.

…

She stopped shushing the nagging voice in her head when Merchant started showing up during office hours. True, he was normally, well, normal, when he showed up at her office but there were instances when Elizabeth felt uncomfortable in her own skin under his scrutiny. But she reminded herself that she was facing a student with a sharp mind beneath the sharp, disturbing eyes and she chose to focus on the former. Besides, her paranoid instincts were probably just sharpened because of her time at the company.

(She wasn't imagining the way his eyes were locked in on her every move, or the way he seemed to dissect her and take her apart with his eyes, though.)

Tuesdays were her favourite day of the week because both she and Henry had two hours for lunch and they always spent every minute of it together, like a midday retreat from work life. It was on such a Tuesday when Merchant dropped by again, and right before her break much to her displeasure. Nonetheless, their discussion was engaging as usual. He offered keen observations on the opposing arguments between Western triumphalism and Soviet weaknesses in the collapse of the USSR which Elizabeth appreciated as an educator, but her issue with him was never about his intellect, just everything else.

She glanced down for a minute, digging through her drawers in search of her list of books she'd usually recommend to the more inquisitive students because she was sure there was one on the Reykjavik summit. Her head snapped back up as she tugged the list out but then her words died in her throat. Stripped of the energy of their discussion, his eyes had a glint in them that could only be described as predatory.

Warning bells began shrieking somewhere in the back of her mind as Elizabeth blinked rapidly.

"Professor?" he asked in his standard quiet tone, the one he had when he was in his normal mood, not wild or withdrawn. But the look in his eyes, it was as though he wanted to consume her, to own her and break her and then it hit her that oh, god, even his normal self was spinning out of control. She's dealt with her fair share of intrusive men over the years but this was different. This was unstable and just plain terrifying, her panic rising within her like bile and her heart hammering away no matter how she tried to compartmentalise it.

She was in her office and the doors were made of solid wood. Would anyone hear if she screamed?

Don't overthink, she tried to convince herself. Two months down, she thought with a visible swallow, two months more to go before the semester was over and he was out of her class, then she could put this mix of paranoia and genuine fear to bed.

Elizabeth cleared her throat. "I'll recommend you a title, the author looked fairly deeply into the politics at play during the summit in 1986 and its effects on the disarmament agreements that came after," she said in the most level of voices she could muster, scribbling on scrap paper and handing it to him. His hand brushed hers as he accepted the paper, his nails scraping the skin on her fingers. She suppressed a shudder at the contact and the way his eyes maintained its intent gaze on her expression. That wasn't an accident. Still, she forced herself to keep her composure until he was out of her office before scrambling to the washroom and scrubbing her hands with unnecessary force. Her primary goal was to get rid of the touch of his hand against hers but if she scrubbed hard enough, maybe the tremor in her hand would wash off too.

Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Find Henry. Stop mutilating hand.

She burst into her husband's office without so much as a knock, hoping that his office would be empty so that no one would witness the beginning of what was probably going to be a nervous breakdown.

"Babe!" Henry looked up, his surprise turning into alarm as he took in her appearance. Elizabeth was well aware that her face was white and covered in a glean of sweat and that one hand was red and raw. "What happened?"

He rounded his desk hurriedly and caught her by her arms just in time for her to crumble into him, grasping his shoulders like a rock climber on a wall, as though she would descend into a freefall to the bottom if she let go. He wrapped an arm around her torso and another around her shoulders, holding her up while her body went almost limp.

"What happened?" he asked again, this time hushed and protective instead of bewildered as he guided her to the couch.

Haltingly, with her face half buried in the crook of his neck, she told him everything else that she hadn't told him, which was everything beside her occasional jokes about students being too attentive. Everything, from how his eyes always followed her around the room and how his mood would shift and swing and how he was always, always a little too interested in her.

Henry's grip tightened as she spilled it all out, a mix of anger and horror surging within him. "Why didn't you tell me sooner? You always played it off like it was nothing and this is not nothing, babe, this is - you're -" he cut himself off, not wanting to drive her further into panic.

"I didn't want to admit to myself that something was up," she said shakily, curling herself further into his embrace and away from the world. "That'd make it too formal, too real."

Henry smoothed his hand over her hair and pressed a kiss to her head instead. Denial was a useful coping mechanism for her, he knew, until denial stopped being enough which was his cue to step up. "C'mon. We'll go get lunch and figure out our next move, alright?" he coaxed, his hands stroking her hand as the redness faded. Elizabeth nodded and let her husband pull her up from the couch, leaning into his side. She had managed not to cry, to Henry's amazement, though he could feel her trembling beneath his firm grip.

"You're going to be fine, I promise," he whispered. She would be, because he would do anything to make sure of it.

…

In the end, Elizabeth chose not to report Merchant to the school authorities or ban him entirely from office hours. Not yet, she had told Henry, let's just try to keep him away first. So they looped in a few other professors who were close to them and made sure if Henry wasn't in his office one storey above hers during her office hours, she was still only a minute away from a trusted friend. Apart from the rare snark ("Seriously, you're ex-CIA and you can't face down a 21 year old?" lamented Mike B, one of Henry's least favourite friends of Elizabeth, though he duly jotted down his office schedule while Elizabeth rolled her eyes), the rest swore to burst into Elizabeth's office if she texted. Elizabeth, on her part, put on her coldest, frostiest demeanor whenever the boy came to find her. Henry had never been on the receiving end of that treatment, only a witness so even he knew to fear and respect cold stone Elizabeth.

It worked for the next month or so. After a combination of pointed hostility from Elizabeth and mid-sentence interruptions by professors 'dropping by', Merchant stopped coming during office hours, instead voicing more questions during tutorials which Elizabeth still insisted on handling. Then she started seeing him everywhere outside of class — as she turned the corner, as she crossed between buildings, even as she —

"Don't look now, but I think Ray Merchant is behind me on my left," she whispered to Henry as they sat down for lunch in the bistro near Gibson Hall. Henry, to his credit, managed not to look immediately, but his eyes hardened and his hand that had been resting leisurely on hers tightened.

"I've had it with this guy," he muttered under his breath. Elizabeth cracked a smile. "Only now, after all the other stuff he's done?" she teased.

"Previously I was angry but now I'm furious. What does he have to gain by following you around?"

"Somehow I doubt rationality is his driving force," she said drily but Henry caught the undertone of anxiety and squeezed her hand a little tighter. "He's not going to get near you," Henry declared, the muscles on his arms flexing slightly. Elizabeth smiled faintly; she never doubted that, not with Henry around.

"Careful, though. Don't get into trouble over him, he's not worth it," she warned.

"He's upsetting you," he said flatly as though that was sufficient cause for conflict. Adoration swelled up within her because to Henry, it was.

Merchant ended up leaving the place before they did, thankfully, and then school let out for Thanksgiving and never had she been so thankful for a vacation break. Dinner with Maureen and Pat was better than lunch with Merchant somewhere behind her, his eyes scrutinising every movement of her shoulder and flick of her hair, and the possibility of Henry getting pulled into this bizarre nonsense in order to protect her.

There's something to be said about her preferring to eat with in-laws who didn't quite like her over her husband on campus all thanks for an obsessive student with issues, but Elizabeth was determined not to dwell on that or she might refuse to return to Charlottesville.

The morning after the dinner however, she made the mistake of checking her inbox and froze.

76 unread.

Given that she had just cleared her emails the previous day, the sheer volume was surprising but what shook her was the uniformity down the 'Sender' column.

From: Merchant, Ray

70 emails from one student, overnight. The timestamps stretched from the previous evening till early dawn at regular intervals, each with a slightly different title, which meant - her breath hitched - he had stayed up all night writing emails to her.

Oh, God.

"Henry," she called quietly, struggling to put a lid to the spiralling fear within her. Her husband was still sleeping, blissfully unaware as she had been just five minutes ago of this latest, this insane, development.

"Henry?" she raised her voice and tried again but immediately fell silent, stomping the panic out of her voice. She could sense him stirring and getting out of the bed towards her. "Babe?" he asked, his voice thick with sleep. A moment later, she heard his sharp inhale and knew that he was processing the same information as she did and, unfortunately, drawing the same conclusions.

"Delete them," he said promptly, his hand firm on her shoulder as support. She shook her head. "I need to find out what's going on," Elizabeth reasoned quietly.

He sighed. "Fine, but let me go through them instead," he said. "You've dealt with enough of this nonsense." She typically preferred to keep information on anything that might threaten her from him, knowing that he would take it harder than she would, but now that he was aware, there was no stopping his determination to shield her and she knew it too. So she curled herself tightly around her husband instead as he skimmed through her emails.

"What does he want?" she mumbled into his shirt after a while, her head resting on his shoulder.

"He wants you to be his thesis advisor, apparently," he answered distractedly and Elizabeth could hear the frown in his voice.

"What else?" she prompted. "Nothing of importance," he said firmly. Then he tensed.

"One of your former students emailed you, that girl you were advising last year. Said Merchant somehow tracked her down on social media and pestered her for your phone number."

"And?"

"She didn't give him anything." Henry exhaled, his body slumping forward in relief.

Elizabeth burrowed her face further into his shirt as his arms wrapped her body close to his, trying to ignore the anxiety that was swirling in the pit of her stomach and making her sick. A couple of clicks later, he sat back in his chair. "Done," he announced.

Elizabeth twisted around to look at the screen. All seventy-one emails, including the one from her ex-student, were gone. "Henry, we need those emails if we want to file a report against him, we could get him expelled for harassment on multiple counts," she protested, turning to her husband with eyes wide. "I know," he reassured, "I forwarded them all to myself before wiping them." He pressed a kiss to her forehead and murmured, "you shouldn't have to read them, ever."

She relaxed into him again. "I love you," she mumbled. "I love you too," Henry whispered solemnly.

…

Much to Henry's disapproval, Elizabeth was adamant on turning down Merchant in person in order to gauge his reaction. She still had no idea what the boy wrote in his flood of emails but whatever it was, it made Henry aggressively protest her insistence. In the end, he only relented when she pointed out that she had no intention of confronting Merchant alone and agreed to having campus security on standby.

The boy took a step into her office and paused, his gaze falling on Henry who sat beside her, stoic and cold in anger.

"Professors," he replied in a level tone, his voice eerily calm that belied the flash of white hot anger in his eyes.

"Merchant," Henry replied curtly.

"I called you here to let you know, Merchant, that I will not be your thesis advisor," Elizabeth informed him with as much composure as she could manage. Henry's solid presence beside her helped, along with the fact that the school authorities had been aghast to hear about Merchant's conduct when Henry turned in evidence of his maniacal behaviour. If things proceeded as expected, this was the last time she would have to see him.

Merchant stared at her, his eyes focused like lasers on hers as usual. "Yes you will," he said brusquely, almost possessively and Henry bristled beside her, reaching sideways to grip her thigh. Elizabeth leaned back coldly. "You can't strong arm me into a decision, Merchant. Surely you know that."

"Watch me," he spat suddenly, surging forward to the edge of his seat. "If you don't comply, I swear, I'll hurt myself," he snarled, grabbing the letter opener on her desk. "I'll hurt myself and I'll blame it on you. I will destroy you." His last words came out in a hiss, eyes narrowed to slits.

"Alright, that's quite enough," Henry snapped as he stood but Merchant made the foolish mistake of ignoring her husband. He stood too, leaning forward until he was hovering right in front of Elizabeth, the pointed end of her letter opener looming dangerously near her neck.

"I'll hurt myself, and then I'll hurt you. You are meant to help me, meant for me and if you don't acquiesce, I'll get to you, do you understand -"

Henry steered him out of the office with a firm hand on his arm, slamming the door open. "Security!" he hollered down the hall.

"This is not the end!" Merchant shouted amidst grunts as security took over and marched him away. Henry remained standing in her doorway, body rigid with anger as he watched the back of that, that psychopath vanish around the corner. Then he turned back to face his wife, her ashen face unflinchingly still and her beautiful blue eyes wide open, staring into the corridor blankly. "Babe?" he asked cautiously.

Elizabeth blinked for the first time since Merchant's tirade and let out a breath she didn't realise she had been holding. "That went well," she said flatly, shakily as Henry engulfed her in a hug she didn't know she needed. His touch, his scent surrounded her, protected her and she held on desperately as her heart calmed down from its thunderous pace.

Elizabeth exhaled. "Is it over now?" she asked her husband softly. "I'll do anything to make sure that it is," he promised. If the school board decided on anything short of expulsion, they'll have to deal with him.

"We still have the board meeting to attend, though," she said, sounding thoughtful for a while. "I'm going to write my most scathing report possible," she decided, pulling out of his arms and turning to her computer.

Henry let out a short burst of laughter. Ruthless and pragmatic were two words that most people didn't associate with his wife, but Henry, he knew better. Keeping his arm tight around her waist, he sat back and watched his wife calmly eviscerate her soon-to-be former student with just the slightest hint of pride.

…

"You okay?" Henry asked as she crawled into bed later that night. "Mm," she hummed in response, snuggling up to him.

"Are you sure?" Henry asked, brows furrowed. Elizabeth smiled and reached up a hand to smooth the crease; he was truly the most caring, most loving husband there ever could be. "I'm sure," she affirmed. She had sent off her report to the board and was waiting for hear their verdict, but given UVA's honour code and the extent of his transgressions, Merchant's expulsion was almost guaranteed.

And there was, of course, something else. She paused. "I might have gotten Isabel and George to flag him. They promised me updates on any suspicious activity," she admitted.

Henry grinned. "The downside of pissing off a spy, huh," he remarked as he pulled her into his embrace, wrapping himself around her.

"Damn straight," Elizabeth mumbled as she let the stress of the day and the warmth of her husband wash Merchant away from her life and nudge her into sleep.

So. I wrote this in about one day, sorry for any mistakes. Hope this was good!