Page 33 of Bound to the Dorm Elf
Rovax shifts his weight, arms uncrossing in a slow, deliberate movement. It’s not restlessness — he doesn’t do restless — but something more like recalibration.
When he speaks, his voice is low and edged, the kind of tone you use when you’re admitting something you’d rather bury under a mountain. “I’ve had allies before.”
I lean against the desk, arms folded, watching him. “And?”
“They came with… conditions.” His eyes narrow slightly, not at me but at the memory. “Debts owed. Power traded. Politics knotted so tight, you’d bleed your fingers trying to pull them apart.”
The words sound bitter, but not fresh. Old scars, not open wounds. Still, the way his jaw ticks tells me the memories aren’t pleasant.
I think about asking — what kind of politics, what kind of debts, who he owed and why — but there’s something about the way he’s standing that makes me stop. This is a man who measures his words like currency, and he’s already given me more than most people probably get.
So I don’t push. I just nod, slow and deliberate. “So you’re not used to someone doing something for you without an angle.”
He studies me for a long moment. “No.”
It’s a flat admission, but there’s something else in it — not quite disbelief, not quite gratitude, just a kind of wary curiosity. Like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, for me to reveal what Ireallywant.
“Maybe,” I say, picking up one of the folded shirts and smoothing the fabric even though it’s already perfectly flat, “you’re overthinking it. Sometimes people just… help.”
He makes a sound low in his throat, half amusement, half dismissal. “Not in my world.”
“Well,” I say, setting the shirt down and meeting his eyes again, “welcome to mine.”
The look he gives me isn’t warm — Rovax doesn’t do warm — but it’s… less cold. Like there’s a crack in the ice, small and dangerous, but there.
The radiator clicks to life in the corner, sending a faint wave of heat through the room. The air smells faintly of laundry detergent and the faint cedar-and-smoke scent that clings to him no matter how long he’s been here.
He glances toward the window, eyes catching on the glow of the city outside. For a moment, I wonder if he’s already thinking about leaving, about how to find his way back to wherever he came from. Then his gaze shifts back to me, sharper again, as if he’s reassembling all those walls he just let slip for half a second.
I don’t know what to do with the fact that I kind of hate seeing him put them back up.
“Get some sleep,” he says finally, tone back to that brisk, commanding register he uses when he wants the conversation over.
I almost laugh, because of course he’d phrase it like an order. But instead I just nod, letting him retreat to whatever corner he’s claimed for the night.
The confession — his and mine — still hums in the air like static. I know better than to think it changed everything, but I can’t shake the feeling it might have shiftedsomething.
Something small, but real.
The door slamsopen hard enough to rattle the posters on the wall.
“Okay, okay, okay — hear me out,” Syndee says, already halfway into the room like she owns the place. She’s got thatcaffeine-and-chaos energy that means she’s either had way too much coffee or is riding the high of a new plan. Probably both.
I barely have time to turn before she’s talking over whatever I might’ve said. “Saturday night, O’Malley’s. Everyone’s going. The band is actually good this time. And—” She stops just long enough to waggle her eyebrows at me, then flick her gaze toward Rovax. “We’re all agreed he’s coming too, right?”
Rovax is exactly where he was two seconds ago — leaning against the wall, arms folded, expression carved from some dark, expensive stone — but I see it. A smirk as much as a smile.
God help me, I think he’s actually intrigued.
I put my hands up. “Whoa, slow down. First of all, I didn’t say I was going?—”
“You’re going,” Syndee cuts in without missing a beat.
“—and second, I’m pretty sure bars aren’t exactly his scene.” I gesture vaguely at Rovax, as if his entire presence proves my point. Which, frankly, it does.
Syndee waves that off like it’s irrelevant. “All the more reason to bring him. I mean, look at him.” She does a slow, theatrical sweep of her hand in his direction. “He’ll be ahit. People will buy him drinks just to hear him say, like, three words in that weird accent of his.”
“It’s not—” I start, but Rovax’s voice cuts through mine.
