Hayden blinked, the skepticism that had been tightening his shoulders relaxing just a little. Usually, when a student lingered this late, it was to barter for a better grade or to complain about the density of the reading material. To be asked about the actual mechanics of a black hole (and by Jake, no less, who usually spent his lectures leaning back with an expression of practiced boredom), was... Unexpected, to say the least. Pushing his glasses up again, he leaned back against the edge of the desk, his fingers tracing the edge of a stray piece of chalk. "Inside the event horizon?" Hayden started, his voice losing some of its defensive edge and adopting the rhythmic, almost melodic cadence he used when he was genuinely excited. "Well, that's the great mystery. General relativity suggests that as you approach the singularity, the gravitational pull becomes so intense that time and space actually swap roles. You'd experience something called 'spaghettification', literally being stretched into a string of atoms, but from your perspective, you might see the entire history of the universe flash by in an instant."
He paused for a moment, his gaze dropping from the ceiling back to Jake. He caught the way the younger man was looking at him, and Hayden felt a shift of something — a brief, distinct awareness. He wasn't as oblivious as his colleagues thought; he knew what people said about the 'young, weird professor.' He knew he was a 'dork.' But he also knew how to read a room when the variables shifted. "But that's just the math. The reality is that once you cross that threshold, the laws of the world we know simply... Cease to apply. You're trapped in a place where light can't escape, where nobody can see what's really happening to you." He let a small moment of silence pass between them for a moment, his eyes searching Jake's. There was a subtle shift in Hayden's posture, the awkwardness was still there, tucked into the corners of his mouth, but there was a sudden, predatory stillness in his gaze that hadn't been there during the lecture. "But if you've been paying any sort of attention in my class, then you would have already known all of that, wouldn't you?" He asked quietly, tilting his head in a slightly mocking way.
