Page 28 of Bound to the Dorm Elf
His mouth twitches — not a smile, exactly, but something close. “No one has tried to slit my throat in my sleep.”
“Well, that’s a low bar, but okay.”
“I mean it.” His gaze drifts back to the city. “Even with your… chaos… this world feels safer. Less… poisoned.”
For a moment, neither of us says anything. The wind tugs a strand of hair across my cheek, and I push it back, my fingers cold from the air.
“You know,” I say, softer now, “most people spend their lives trying to make their world feel like that. Safer. Quieter. It’s… kind of wild you’ve just walked into it and might choose to stay.”
“I have not decided,” he says, but there’s no weight behind the denial.
I lean my elbows on the railing beside him, the metal cool under my skin. “Well… whatever you decide, I’m not going to pretend I won’t have an opinion.”
His eyes cut toward me again, curious. “And what opinion is that?”
“That it would be nice if you didn’t disappear back through some magic toilet without warning.”
That earns me a real smile — small, quick, but undeniably there. “I will keep that in mind.”
We stand there a little longer, the city humming below us, the air smelling faintly of rain that hasn’t fallen yet. Since I hit him with my car, the idea of him leaving feels… real. And I’m not sure I like it.
It’s subtle, but it’s there — that shift in his stance, like something inside him has uncoiled just enough to let air in. Not a full lowering of his guard, but… a breach.
I could push. God knows I want to. There’s a whole avalanche of questions sitting at the tip of my tongue — about his world, his life there, about what it means for him to even be considering staying here.
But there’s something in the set of his shoulders, the way his hands grip the railing like he’s bracing for a hit, that makes me… stop.
Instead, I lean against the cool metal beside him, feeling it bite through the thin cotton of my sweatshirt. “You’re not the only one who’s… undecided,” I say, my voice quieter than I mean it to be.
His head turns slightly, not enough to meet my eyes, but enough that I know he’s listening.
“My parents want me to go to law school.” I give a humorless laugh. “Correction — theyexpectme to. It’s not even a conversation anymore. Pre-law since I was eighteen. My mom’s already daydreaming about me in some glossy magazine spread under ‘Top 30 Attorneys Under 30.’”
He glances at me now, just a flicker of red catching the light. “And you do not want this?”
“No.” The word slips out before I can soften it. “I mean… maybe I could do it. I’m good with words, I can keep my cool in an argument — but that’s not the point. I don’t want to spend my life chasing the biggest paycheck or the flashiest case. I want to study people. Societies. Why we do the things we do and how we could do them better. Sociology.”
He doesn’t say anything right away, just watches me with that steady, unreadable gaze of his. It’s… unnerving. Like he’s weighing my words on some scale I can’t see.
“My parents think it’s a waste,” I add, staring out at the blur of traffic on the street below. “They don’t say it like that, but I can hear it. The way their voices get tight. The pauses.”
He shifts, resting one forearm on the railing. “You wish to understand your world,” he says finally. “They wish you to profit from it.”
I blink at him. “Yeah. That’s… exactly it.”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “And you are torn between obedience and truth.”
I huff out a breath, a mix of a laugh and a sigh. “You make it sound simple.”
“It is not simple,” he says, and there’s a note in his voice — low, almost rough — that tells me he understands more than he’s saying. “It is… costly.”
The way he says it makes the hairs rise on the back of my neck. Costly like he’s paid that price before.
For a moment, we just stand there, the night air cool against my face, the city lights flickering in the distance. I can hear my own heartbeat, steady but a little too fast, like my body knows this conversation means more than I’ve admitted to myself.
I glance at him again, at the clean, inhuman symmetry of his profile softened by shadow. “What would you do?” I ask. “If you were me.”
His eyes find mine, and for a split second, I think he’s going to dodge the question like he always does. But instead, he says, “I would choose the life that lets me breathe.”
