Jay blinked. Tobin emitted a sound that could have been a cough, a laugh, or perhaps a mix of both. Cody simply stared.

And then, because genuine and well-placed absurdity can often catch one off guard, Jay laughed first. It was a brief, reluctant laugh from someone who hadn’t expected to find anything amusing, followed by Tobin’s more exuberant response and Cody’s reluctant exhale.

The social temperature of the table moved several degrees in a direction Mike had intended.

"Protecting the nerd for the MILF," Jay said, somewhere between disbelief and appreciation. "That’s one way to handle it."

"Yeah, this guy is unique, guys." Jay glanced at his two friends. "I think we will have our fun if he’s around."

"It’s a practical way to handle it," Mike said. "I prefer practical."

"Wait a minute..." Tobin was still grinning. "She’s actually that good-looking?"

"Tall," Mike said. "Composed. Very aware of what she wants."

He paused for a moment. "But it’s not really important."

"It’s a little important," Tobin said.

Mike allowed himself the kind of smile that agreed without fully committing. Then he set his palms on the table.

"So we’re clear on Tyler?"

Jay looked at him for a moment, assessing carefully what they had agreed to and what the actual costs were.

"Yeah," he said. "We’re clear."

"Good." Mike did not move to stand up yet. "There’s something else."

The three of them watched him.

"Tyler is off the table. But I assume the energy has to go somewhere." He said this without judgment, as though he were observing the basic physics of the situation. "There’s a fourth-year in the engineering library who has apparently been very aggressively reporting other students’ minor violations to the department head."

"Three complaints filed in the last month. His name is Toby."

"How did you know that?" Jay asked.

"For one whole week I walked around this campus just to hear all the good stuff, and here it is..."

"Toby, huh?" Cody straightened slightly. "You’re saying Toby Marsh?"

"Is that him?"

"Glasses, always arguing with the librarian about noise, acts like he owns the quiet floor?"

"Sounds about right," Mike said.

Cody glanced at Jay, who was staring at the table.

Tobin picked up his coffee cup and said nothing, which was the most eloquent contribution.

"We’re not concerned with his scholarship or his record," Mike stated. "We don’t care about anything that exists on paper."

"What we need is for him to grasp that the minor issues of others are not his responsibility." He stood up. "That distinction is important."

He took two steps and then stopped, because there was one more thing and the moment was now rather than later.

"One more thing," he said.

He looked at Jay specifically. "The footage is stored."

"If something happens to Tyler again, or if anything happens to me, or if this arrangement becomes inconvenient for any of you, it will go to the faculty board the same day." He said this with a calm tone, as if he were explaining a straightforward process. "I’m not saying this to threaten you."

"I’m sharing this information because I believe in ensuring that people have all the details when making decisions."

Jay looked at him steadily. "And if nothing happens to Tyler."

"Then it stays where it is," Mike said. "Nobody needs to know it exists."

Jay held his gaze for another second and then nodded once, slow and deliberate, the kind of nod that means more than agreement. It meant understood.

"Don’t worry, it’s all clear."

"Good, name’s Mike Hawk, by the way."

"Mike Hawk... like my cock?" Tobin said jokingly.

"You get it... because I’ve fucked lots of women."

"Good one," Cody laughed.

Mike left them at the table and walked back toward the arts building at the same pace he had arrived at.

...

He did not see what happened with Toby Marsh directly, because he had a seminar at eleven and a lunch with Kyle and Joseph afterward that occupied most of the afternoon, and the specifics were not his concern.

What he knew was that Tobin had sent a message to his number at half past two that afternoon, stating, "South Eng Library. Handled. No paper trail." This indicated that the situation had been addressed and that no record remained.

What Tobin told him later, at the rooftop, with the casual brevity of someone describing a transaction rather than an event: Toby Marsh had been approached at his usual table on the engineering library’s quiet floor, the one near the window that he had apparently claimed as his personal territory for two years running.

Cody had sat across from him without asking. Jay had taken the chair to his left. Tobin had remained standing, which he said was more effective than sitting in this context.

They had not threatened him. They had not touched anything on his table.

They had explained to him, in a straightforward way, that the faculty board was not very interested in complaint reports that were made not because of real problems but because someone chose to report minor issues for other students.

They had informed him that when three complaints in one month came from a single source, it began to appear to those who noticed such patterns as less about civic concern and more indicative of a different motivation. They had communicated this similarly to how one might inform someone that a specific road is closed and that an alternate route is available.

Toby Marsh had said nothing for most of this. When Cody stood to leave, Marsh had asked what this was about, and Jay had told him it was about nothing in particular, just a general observation from people who noticed things.

The library complaint records for the following three weeks showed zero entries under Marsh’s name.

Mike read Tobin’s message at the end of the lunch, added the information to the part of his mind where he kept things that were useful and complete, and put his phone back in his pocket.

...

The east wing rooftop was technically not a student space, which meant it was exactly where certain students chose to be when they wanted to be somewhere that wasn’t monitored. Mike had been told about it by Tobin, who had mentioned it with the offhand familiarity of a regular, and had accepted the invitation with the simple logic that rooftops were useful things to know about.

By midday the three of them were up there with a view of the campus spread below in its overcast Friday configuration: students moving between buildings, a group doing something with measuring tape near the south quad, and the business building’s glass exterior reflecting a cloud that was trying to decide whether to commit to rain.

Jay was leaning on the railing looking at his phone. Cody sat cross-legged on a section of the bench, holding a bag of something.

Tobin was talking, as he often did, and the subject had shifted in the typical manner that conversations do when people become comfortable, moving from one topic to another without fully settling on any.

"The thing about campus," Tobin was saying, "is that everyone is performing something."

"Even the ones who think they’re not performing."

"Deep," Cody said.

"I’m serious! You’ve got the girl in every seminar who has a comment prepared before the professor finishes the question, and you’ve got the guy who sits at the back and says nothing and wants everyone to think he’s brilliant, and you’ve got the—"

"And then you’ve got the guy who talks on rooftops about how everyone performs," Jay said, still looking at his phone, "who is also performing."

Tobin pointed at him. "That’s actually the correct observation."

"I include myself in it."

"The awareness doesn’t exempt you from the thing." He turned to Mike. "You agree with that?"

"Completely agree with that fam," Mike said. "Nice answer, nephew."

"See, that’s what I mean!"

"The question is just what you’re performing and whether you chose it or whether it chose you." Tobin leaned back against the wall behind him. "Most people didn’t choose."

"They just kept doing the thing that got the best response at fourteen and never updated it."