"It's not quite that simple," Bella says, abandoning the timer as useless for this purpose, or at least this person. "Lots of things I might want interact. As long as anything I want is more important to me than not hurting you, you might be faced with - for example - the choice of whether to be in my way or not."

"...Run that by me again," he says, "because it made no sense the first time."

Bella hums to herself, thinking of examples. Finally she says, "Imagine your dad made some asshole move that had nothing to do with you, and also really pissed me off, and also there is no evidence of it sufficient to convict or it is not technically a crime or he buys off the judge on that one. And imagine I go on an overblown crusade to bring him to justice, however oblique, however slim my chance of success, and whatever the collateral damage. I'm making this example up; it's not at all likely that I'd chase messy goals on this scale without good odds of getting what I'm after, not when there are other things to do. But suppose I did. You might be in my way or you might be helpful. And since we're imagining that my crusade is my top priority, you know what will happen if you stand in various places relative to said crusade. What would you want me to do with the power to hurt you?"

"Oh," he says, and smiles, and shakes his head, and touches the scar that runs under the corner of his jaw. "No wonder it made no sense. Yeah, there is one person in the world who can get me to do stuff by threatening to hurt me, and you're not him."

"Example-me isn't threatening - isn't bothering to. Example-me will go over or through you if she has to, and doesn't care because there is a higher priority." She pauses. "I would make a terrifying religious fanatic. It's probably good I'm not one."

"So, in this example, where I stand relative to your crusade depends on whether or not I want you to win," he says, "and I still don't get the original question."

"...Dunno," he says. "Pretty sure I just do."

"The way some people just like strawberry ice cream?" she inquires skeptically.

"Kinda, yeah. What, I can't be kinky?"

"Getting beat up by Dave Farber in the middle of the hallway in front of a couple dozen people was a sex thing?" Bella asks, frowning.

"...Kinda, yeah," he repeats, in a slightly different tone. "I mean, there's more to it than that, but I'm pretty sure you can guess the rest."

"Several dozen people, such as me, did not agree to be involved in your sex thing," Bella says. "Dave Farber included. Does the more that there is mitigate this glaringly obvious problem at all?"

"Well, it wasn't a sex thing for you," he points out. "Think for a sec about reasons why I might wanna get beat up a lot at school, and then don't tell me the answer when you've got it."

"...Well, that's a mental image I didn't know I wanted," he says, blinking. "Anyway. It's different, though, ain't it? I mean, the guy in the tree, you're... part of that. And you don't wanna be, I mean, I'm assuming. The only person who's really part of me liking getting beat up is me. Everybody else just sees the part where I'm getting beat up."

Bella scrunches her eyes shut. "In what sense am I more part of an interaction with a Peeping Tom whose presence I might never be aware of, than Farber or someone like him is part of an interaction that involves plenty of physical contact that he's fully cognizant of? You're making up justifications. I think your brain wants to tell you that what you're doing is purely okay instead of maybe-on-balance okay. This is the part where, if you're like me, you make it admit that it's actually sketchy as all get out - and you care about something else more than about not being sketchy."

"I don't really give a shit how sketchy I am," he says. "But I get people to beat me up all the time, and I wouldn't climb a tree outside your window to watch you change, even if I somehow found out that what you're keeping under there is as hot as a kick in the balls."

This is completely beside her point. "And?"

"And that kind of means they're different things, don't it? To me, anyway, apparently not to you."

"I'm not trying to claim they're identical, or that anyone who'd do one logically would do the other," Bella says. "I was countering your attempt at justifying the one by analogy to the other."

"...Okay, different angle," he says. "Do you feel like me getting beat up is a sex thing you don't wanna be looking at?"

"Well, I do now. Pretty sure some modestly clever version of Dave Farber whose response to all discomfort isn't 'hit it harder' would also."

"Sorry," he says, to all appearances sincerely. "Does it change anything if the sex thing isn't why I do it? I do it because of the other thing. And because getting in fights is, y'know, fun, in a strawberry-ice-cream way. Getting off on it is just... it's not even a bonus, it's not an extra, it's just an also."