Did Kathryn Hahn Know About The Lesbian Army Standing Behind Her? #WWHL

Did Kathryn Hahn know about the lesbian army standing behind her? #WWHL

The psychology of love (Part 3)

Your first date with Morgan and a lesson in defense mechanisms and the delay of gratification

Word count: 4.1k

Warnings: none yet, slowburn

Morgan and you go out to dinner the next day. You had seriously been considering just never texting her and making more of an effort to avoid her, but Wanda and Nat pestered you continuously during breakfast until you had given in.

Turns out, you were both free that night.

You had a class in the evening, so you meet her at the pizza place off-campus after. She’s wearing a light blue dress that brings out the color in her eyes and her Black Opium perfume makes you wish there was someone different sitting in front of you.

“Did you have a good day?” she asks while you’re waiting for your pizzas to be done cooking. The awkwardness of a first date is hanging over you, coupled with the fact that her fingers were inside you on Monday. You’re still a little shocked that happened.

But you nod and smile. Morgan is nice, and she’s trying. The least you could do is try as well. “Yeah, I had two classes. They’re both pretty easy. My hardest are definitely Physiological Psych and Personality Psych.”

Even the mention of the latter makes your stomach clench. Agatha has wormed her way into your brain and you don’t know how to get her out. The perfume you ordered should be here tomorrow and you regret buying it.

Realistically, what are you going to do with it? You can’t wear it—both Morgan and Agatha will pick up on it. It’d be absolutely pathetic to spray your pillow with it and imagine it’s Agatha next to you, plus Wanda would surely wonder about that.

Which means you spent one-hundred dollars on a bottle of perfume that’s going to sit on your desk and serve as a reminder that you’re delusional.

A waitress brings over your personal pizzas and sets them down in front of you, steam billowing off.

Morgan’s looking at you, a little expectantly, and you clear your throat. “How was your day?” you ask, realizing that you never returned the question.

“Pretty good, thanks. I had an International Relations class. We already have a quiz next Tuesday, which is crazy considering this was our second day of meeting.” You learned that she’s a Political Science major while you were waiting in line for pizza.

She doesn’t say anything else, so you chew on your lip and try to think of ways to get the conversation going. “So…how did you get into political science?” At least her face brightens at that.

“My dad works in local government and I’ve always been really interested in it. I’ve interned at his office since I was probably sixteen? I’ll be able to get a job with him once I graduate and then hopefully I can be elected for something,” she says before launching into a few stories about town halls that she’s been a part of. She’s from a small town in Indiana and the people there are apparently a little unhinged.

Morgan’s just telling you about a petition one man started to make his birthday a town holiday when the door to the restaurant opens and a familiar face walks in.

It’s Agatha’s standoffish TA. Morgan is still talking but your eyes follow Rio as she walks up to the counter and shows them her phone. The lady nods and picks up a boxed pizza that’s sitting next to her and hands it to Rio.

As she’s walking to the exit, she tilts her head over to you like she feels you staring. You quickly look away but in your periphery, you can see her coming closer until you have no choice but to crane your neck up at her.

“You’re in Professor Harkness’s class, aren’t you?” Rio asks, but it’s more of a statement than a question. She obviously remembers you from Agatha’s office yesterday.

You nod and she chuckles amusedly, tongue bulging in her cheek. Her complete one-eighty of a personality change is throwing you off.

Rio glances at Morgan and then back to you, a gleam in her eyes. “Good luck.” Before you can ask what she means—is she talking about Agatha’s class? talking about Morgan?—she shifts the pizza in her arms and strolls out the door without looking back.

Morgan raises an eyebrow at you. “That was weird.”

You choose to not say anything and take a bite of your pizza, instantly wincing when it burns your mouth. “Did the man get his petition approved?” you refer to what she had been talking about before Rio, and Morgan dives back into that memory.

She talks for most of dinner, only really taking a break while she’s eating, and then you walk her to her car. Thankfully, neither of you wants to hang out in the resultant once you’re both done with your food. She’s parked right in front whereas you had to find a spot in the garage behind the row of restaurants.

“Do you want me to give you a ride to your car?” Morgan offers and you pretend to think about it before shaking your head.

“No, that’s okay. It’s not very far.” There’s a minute of silent shuffling while you both try to figure out how to end the date. “Um, well I had a great time with you tonight. Let’s do this again soon?”

She smiles warmly. “I’d love that.” And then Morgan leans in to press a quick kiss to your cheek before getting in her car. Her perfume drifts into your nostrils and lingers and you hear Agatha’s voice telling you that you did very good. Heat flashes through you but you tamp it down.

You wait until Morgan drives off before turning to head to the parking garage, but you see another person that you know in the shadows.

Professor Harkness.

Your heart lurches as she pushes off the building wall she was leaning against and steps into the light. She’s wearing blue pants and a matching blazer over a black turtleneck. The gold from her necklace catches the streetlamp glow. Her long, loose hair frames her face and you can see her blue eyes glinting even in the dark.

Swallowing roughly, you irrationally worry that she’s going to be mad about you and Morgan. A part of you wants her to be mad.

But she just smirks instead. “Dinner with a friend?”

“Something like that,” you mutter, shrugging inconspicuously. “What are you doing here?” It seems like she’s waiting for someone—a date? Not that it matters, of course. You just want insight into your mysterious teacher.

She moves closer to you, close enough so you can smell her perfume. It’s getting really fucking confusing with both Agatha and Morgan wearing the same scent. “I’m just picking up dinner,” she hums. “Nothing as exciting as you.”

Your cheeks burn. “That wasn’t anything, just a first date. We met at a party a few days ago.” When I let her fuck me because she reminded me of you.

Agatha nods like she knows something you don’t. “Do you remember learning about defense mechanisms?”

“What?”

“In a general psych class, did you ever learn about defense mechanisms? Freudian methodology, of course, that believes our ego unconsciously wants to protect the superego from the id when we do something that would otherwise cause us anxiety, guilt, and shame.”

“I mean, yeah?” You’ve heard of them, but why is she bringing them up?

She waves a hand at your apparent confusion. “We’ll get more into them later in the semester. I just think it’s neat, you know? How we can be doing something and not even be aware that we’re doing it. Denial, rationalization,” she fixes you with a pointed look, “transference. The mind does really work in interesting ways.”

You nod and bite your nails, not sure what to say. It feels like you’re missing something by a mile.

But Agatha just smiles. “See you tomorrow in class, hon.” She winks before leaving you outside and you slowly trudge back to your car, completely dumbfounded.

Once you get back to your dorm, the conversation with Agatha still fresh in your mind, you halfheartedly return Wanda’s greeting and take out your computer and type “transference” into Google.

Transference is the psychological phenomenon where someone redirects feelings from one person onto another. It occurs when someone unconsciously projects feelings or desires onto someone else.

“Holy shit,” you say out loud, your blood running cold. Wanda’s head turns toward you but it’s like you have tunnel vision.

Was Agatha implying that you going out with Morgan is you redirecting your feelings toward your professor onto someone who looks like her?

Your heart is thumping so loud you can hear it. Are you being that obvious to Agatha? Can she tell that you have a crush on her?

As if to make matters worse, you get an email notification saying that a package has been delivered—the perfume. A whole day early, like the universe wants to prove its point.

You let it sit in the delivery room all night because you don’t trust yourself not to go crazy if you smell it right now.

But you barely get any sleep at all just thinking about it.

The next morning, Wanda and Nat interrogate you at breakfast. You had told Wanda the general basics of how the date had gone last night, but now they’re pressing you for the details, which you reluctantly give.

“It was good, she spent a lot of time talking about interning for her town’s government. She’s a Poli-Sci major—” Nat scoffs and rolls her eyes and Wanda laughs, “—and apparently her dad is like the mayor or a council member? I don’t know, I mean, she’s nice and all…”

“Oh, come on,” Wanda says, fond exasperation staining her voice. “You always do this. You meet a great girl and then you decide that she’s boring or that you don’t really like her or you make one tiny thing of their personality into a big problem. Why can’t you just let yourself have something?”

It stings how well she knows you. “I just…I don’t know…I’m just not sure we’d work that well together. And it doesn’t really make sense to get into a relationship now, does it? We’re graduating in the spring so why start something new if we’re going to end up in different places? She wants to go back to Indiana and I’ll probably stay here or go back home, so it just doesn’t seem like there’s much of a point.”

Nat looks unimpressed. “Really? That’s your excuse for why you’re going to self-sabotage? If only long-distance was a thing, god.”

Wanda pats her girlfriend’s hand and stifles a smirk at the sarcasm. “Just because it’s not going to end in marriage doesn’t mean it’s not worth it,” she says gently. “Why not go on a few more dates, just to see what happens? And who knows? She could be worth it.”

It won’t work because she’s not at least twice my age. Except you can’t exactly tell your friends that. So instead you say, “Yeah, maybe.”

“Even if it’s not a relationship, it could be a friends-with-benefits situation,” Natasha adds and Wanda snorts. “You’ve already had sex with her so you already know what you’d be getting into.”

“Okay, okay,” you grimace at her crassness and push your chair back. “I have to get to class.”

You have about twenty minutes before it starts, so you’re not in a rush, but you need the walk to clear your head and mentally prepare for seeing Agatha. The quip about transference has you still reeling and it’s only the third day of this class but it’s already the second time you’ve been nervous to look at her. You’re not sure you can get in trouble for having a crush on a teacher but you certainly don’t want Agatha being uncomfortable around you.

So you’ll keep your distance. You’ll go to class and take notes and answer questions, but you’ll leave right after. You won’t let her praise affect you and you will definitely not get close enough to smell her perfume that makes your cunt pulse.

Practically everything you were just thinking goes out the window when you walk into class and see her standing at the front of the room.

Agatha’s wearing another turtleneck, white this time, under a tan blazer and matching pants. You wonder if she’s been wearing them to hide hickeys on her neck—but then you remind yourself that you don’t care, despite the growing feeling of jealousy in your stomach from your absolutely baseless speculations.

She smiles at you, something dark hidden behind her pink lips, and you shiver as you sit down. Does she know what she does to you? The praises, the projection tests from Wednesday, the way she looks at you?

She seems to like you more than the other students in the class—is that just because you answer questions? Does she encourage you for that because she needs someone to? You’ve had classes where absolutely no one would talk and it was awful. Her praising you for that could just be her way of making sure there’s not an awkward silence.

But it feels direct, pointed even. Like she wants it to be you.

Or is that just you hoping?

Agatha isn’t the first teacher you’ve had a crush on, not by a long shot. There was the English teacher when you were in eighth grade. She wasn’t even your teacher, but you still found excuses to talk to her. There was your ninth grade Biology teacher, and then you took her Environmental Science class senior year just to have her again. Your Developmental Psychology professor from the spring semester of your first year in college. You’re sure there’s more. Each time, though, you were certain that you were special.

Each time, you were sorely disappointed, but not surprised.

You want to say that it feels different with Agatha, but you need to get a grip on yourself.

She’s in her late forties, at least. She might have a partner. You glance at her hands as she’s typing something on the computer. No ring. That doesn’t mean anything, you tell yourself.

But she could get in serious trouble for sleeping with a student. If everything else worked out, if all the other stars aligned and by some way, she did want you, she’d never risk her job over that. She has two doctorates and has published multiple articles about her research, which you’ve been meaning to read, and has won several awards for her work. She’s devoted her whole life to psychology and you are not going to change that.

Agatha may tease, but at the end of the day, you feel confident that she will never be anything but professional, which means that you really need to get over this.

“Okay, getting back into Trait Theory,” Agatha starts and you scramble for your notebook. She clicks present on the slideshow and you begin scribbling down everything typed on the first slide. “Theorists who approach personality through the Trait approach want to know what exactly traits are and what they do. Do they describe how we behave? Are they a sum of all we’ve learned? Do they reflect underlying personality? Are they the building blocks of our personality?”

You chew on the tip of your pen and Agatha’s eyes flick to you with a glint in them. Her lips twitch up and you freeze.

“The problem with traits is that people are inconsistent. We act one way when we’re by ourselves and a different way when we’re with friends versus family versus professors versus romantic partners. So do situations predict behavior more than personality traits?”

Agatha surveys the classroom expectantly so you hesitantly raise your hand, wheels turning in your head trying to think of a sophisticated response. She smirks and nods at you. “I mean, I think situations obviously have some part in how we act, but it’s not like we’re completely different people based on who we’re interacting with. It could be kind of like, what traits do we use more of when we’re with some people and what traits do we use less of?”

Her brows furrow and you can see her mulling it over. “So you’re saying that we have a bank of traits, of consistent traits, but which ones we tap into depends on who we’re with?”

“Yes?” Your voice wavers but you hold eye contact with her.

Agatha hums thoughtfully. “Very good. I like that.” Your cheeks flush and you duck your head, the eye contact becoming too intense. “And it brings us to an interesting thought. I want everyone to write down how you consider yourself personality-wise. And then write down some traits you’d use to describe your best friends.”

You write some general words down for you and then for Wanda and Nat. It’s hard to sum someone’s personality up like that. Glancing around the room, you see everyone’s still working so you pick at your nails and pretend that you don’t feel Agatha staring at you.

The compulsion grows too great in you, though, so you look at her. She doesn’t seem abashed that you caught her—if anything, she looks excited. You swallow roughly to get some moisture into your suddenly-dry mouth and your teeth sink into your bottom lip. Her eyelashes flutter, maybe just enough to be considered a wink, but then someone coughs and the moment is broken.

Agatha clears her throat. “Take a look at what words you wrote for yourself and then compare them to the words you wrote for your friends. Chances are, there’s a good amount of overlap. Opposites attract sometimes, but it’s more often than not that we choose to surround ourselves with people that have similar personalities to us. If we do that, then our traits might be influencing the situations that we’re in, which influences our behavior. It’s a lot to think about.”

She clicks to the next slide.

“Psychologists have found that both situations and traits influence behavior about equally after conducting some experiments that we’ll look at another time. Now,” she turns off the projection and the screen at the front of the room goes dark. Everyone looks at her. “I want to talk to you about an opportunity for next week.”

Someone out of the corner of your eye perks up. “Extra credit?”

Agatha shoots him down with a glare. “It’s the third class of the semester, first of all. Second of all, there will be no extra credit in this course.”

He slumps down, defeated. You think he might be the same person from the first day who was upset about only having five grades.

“We will have a speaker on campus next Tuesday evening at six pm giving a presentation on fallacies from famous psychological experiments. I’ll be sending out more information about it, but I think it will be very interesting, especially for this class. It’s optional, but I do heavily recommend attending.”

You raise your hand and she smiles. “What studies are they going to look at?”

“Excellent question. The presentation will look at the Rosenthal study on expectancy effects, the Stanford Prison Experiment, among a few others, and one of my personal favorites: the study on delay of gratification.”

“Is that the one—” a girl begins to say before Agatha interrupts her like she didn’t even hear the student.

“Mischel and Ebbesen would call kids into a room one-by-one and tell them that they could either have a small candy bar right away, or wait some unknown amount of time for a larger candy bar. The researchers would leave the room and see what the kids would do.” Her blue eyes pierce into you and her face morphs into something almost predatory. “Is it better to get instant relief for something small, or to wait and let the anticipation build up for a better reward?”

She prompts you with a tilt of her head and you wonder if she can see the slight sheen of sweat breaking out on your forehead. “If it’s going to be worth it to wait,” you rasp.

Agatha licks her lips before nodding slowly and then settles back into her casual demeanor. “I mean, who doesn’t want a bigger candy bar?” she jokes and there’s a titter throughout the room. She gives you a smug smile and you face forward, cheeks burning.

She continues talking but you’ve completely zoned out. You feel like a kid in the experiment—have something with Morgan, real but fleeting, or wait for even the possibility of Agatha? Once you’re not her student anymore, there shouldn’t be a problem. And you graduate in the spring anyway.

But that’s if Agatha would even like you back then.

What happens if the researcher never comes back with the big candy bar after the kid waits forever?

She finally wraps up class, saying that she needs to rush off to a meeting and you slowly pack up your bag just in case she lingers. She may be in a hurry, but it’s nothing compared to the other students and it’s only a minute before you and her are the only ones left in the room.

The air feels thick with electricity and tension and it’s like you’re rooted to your seat when she starts to slowly walk toward you. You can feel your heartbeat increase and your breathing quickens—your body wants to run but it can’t.

“Great job today,” she mumbles and drums her fingertips atop your desk surface, her perfume rolling over you like a wave, and you don’t even realize that she’s gone until you hear the door shut behind you.

You shakily stand up and swing your bag onto your shoulders and go to the library, desperately trying to ignore the heat between your legs.

After dinner, you pick up the package containing the perfume on your way back to your dorm. You’re almost afraid to open and smell it because you know your body will betray your mind. Your cunt has become conditioned to the scent—conditioned to Agatha—and you really need to figure out how to stop it. You’d throw out the bottle entirely if you hadn’t spent so much money on it. You’ll find some use for it, maybe for a party or something.

Just as you get into your room, your phone buzzes with an email. Your heart starts to race when you see Agatha Harkness at the top of it and you quickly click on it.

To your dismay, it’s just a course email.

Hello Personality Psych,

Here is the link for information concerning the speaker presentation next Tuesday evening that I mentioned in class. As a reminder, you will not receive any extra credit for attending, but it is an opportunity to learn more about flaws in renowned psychological experiments. Please email me if you are interested so I can get your name on the list.

Best,

Professor Harkness

You chew on your lip. It’s not something that you necessarily want to go to, and for no extra credit, it might be a waste of time.

But you do seriously doubt that anyone else in your class is going to go, which would make you stand out to Agatha.

You imagine walking into a room full of people you don’t know, anxiously scanning the crowd, to find her smiling at you and beckoning for you to go sit next to her. She’d lean in to whisper some remarks about the speaker into your ear and her hair would tickle your skin. Maybe you’d be bouncing your leg because of your trouble sitting still and she’d put a hand on your thigh to help you focus.

Fuck. Your cheeks are burning now and the temptation to open the perfume so it feels like she’s there is gnawing strongly inside you.

Instead, you compose a new email.

Hi Professor Harkness,

I would love to attend the presentation.

Thanks!

You sign it off with your name and hit send before you can rethink it and then throw your phone to the end of the bed.

The moment you press your hands to your face because you can’t believe how bad this is getting, your phone vibrates. You know what it’s going to be before you even look at it, and yet you’re still surprised to find that Agatha responded almost immediately.

I’m very glad to hear that and I look forward to seeing you there.

Professor Harkness.

Only this time, instead of the regular email signature under her name, and every other professor’s name in their emails, that shows her position, the university name, and her email address, there’s something else as well.

Ten digits. Your breath catches in her throat.

She added her phone number.

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msscre

2 months ago

listen to the giver like a proud mom… ily chappell ☹️

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