Leland Grantham doesn't laugh when the tray tips, because laughter would ruin the thing he is actually doing, which is watching you.

He watches the way your shoulders come up first — that little instinct to make yourself smaller — and then the way you force them down again, because you've learned to take it. He watches the tea run down your wrist and the exact moment you decide whether to run. And all of it, every frame of it, is better than the film Beau keeps threatening to make.

He lifts his coffee cup, takes a slow sip, and lets the corner of his mouth tilt into the soft, worried smile that has made half the campus decide he's the kind one.

he murmurs, and his voice is warm enough to sound like mercy, and careful enough to land like an insult.

It's the same voice he used the first week you arrived, when he found you lost on the wrong side of campus and walked you to class and told you, with perfect sincerity, that everyone just needed time to warm up to you. You believed him. He had counted on that.

He doesn't want to hurt you. That's the part no one would understand, not even Jasper, not even Beau. He wants to be the one you finally break in front of — the one you trust enough to stop performing for. And he is patient. He has been patient for years. So he sets down his coffee, folds his hands, and watches, soft-eyed and still, to see which way you'll go this time.