He is looking at me the way he looked at me in the locker room, before the walls went up and the silence closed around him. With the quiet, focused attention of a man who sees what he is looking at and finds it worth seeing.
"I'll grab my stuff real quick," I manage, redirecting my gaze from his green eyes to the flooded interior of my suite before the blush can escalate from visible to radioactive.
I am three steps toward the waterfall when he moves.
The rustle of fabric is the only warning. He pulls his outer shirt over his head in a single, fluid motion, the garment clearing his ginger hair and leaving him in the white undershirt that clings to his lean frame with the specific fidelity of thin cotton stretched over muscle it was not designed to advertise.
He holds the shirt out to me.
"Wear this. At least it's drier than yours."
I take the shirt. The fabric is warm from his body, the cedarwood scent concentrated in the weave with a potency that my olfactory system intercepts and processes as both comfort and danger in the same chemical transaction. I pull it over my head without argument, the oversized fit settling across my shoulders and falling past my hips, converting my silhouette from drenched-Omega-in-clinging-fabric to Omega-drowning-in-Alpha's-laundry.
This is the second time I have worn this man's clothing.
Third if you count the tank top I refused to wash and saved from a flood.
At this rate, his wardrobe is going to constitute fifty percent of my functional outfits by the end of the month.
I navigate the waterfall with the strategic precision of a hockey player reading defensive gaps, timing my sprint past the descending stream to minimize contact. My room is mercifully dry. The luggage sits on the bed where I left it, untouched by the leak that has transformed the common areas into an indoor swimming facility. I never fully unpacked, a habit developed through years of temporary housing and the specific, learned caution of a woman who keeps her bags ready because permanence has never been a feature of her residential history.
A quick check in the bathroom mirror confirms the damage assessment. Hair plastered to my skull in dark, soaked ribbons. Face flushed from the cold. The original shirt underneathArchie's is transparent, the wet fabric outlining every contour of my chest and waist with an anatomical specificity that would make a medical illustrator blush.
Thank god he gave me his shirt.
Because the alternative was walking through campus corridors with my entire physical inventory on display for every Alpha within visual range, and I have met my quota for involuntary body exposure this semester.
I do not enjoy emphasizing my body. The curves and the muscle definition and the athletic architecture that years of hockey conditioning have produced exist beneath my clothing as functional equipment rather than decorative features. I dress to conceal rather than reveal, choosing oversized fabrics and baggy fits that communicateI am here to compete, not to be appraisedin a language that most Alphas cannot read but that my comfort requires.
Very rarely do I make exceptions. Maybe for a party. Maybe when I am high enough that self-consciousness dissolves into the chemical confidence that cannabis provides on the rare occasions I indulge. But those moments are controlled. Chosen. Environments where the exposure is voluntary and the audience is curated.
This is not one of those moments.
I strip the soaked shirt, towel off quickly, and pull a dry compression top from my luggage before layering Archie's shirt back over it. The cedarwood scent settles around me like a second skin, warm and grounding, a mobile territory that my hindbrain has decided is an acceptable substitute for the safety my dorm can no longer provide.
I grab both suitcases, haul them off the bed, and return to the common room where the ceiling waterfall continues its performance and Glen the plumber is receiving a lecture from Miss Phillip that will likely feature in his nightmares for years.
Archie is waiting in the doorway.
Arms crossed. Leaning against the frame. His green eyes tracking my approach through the damaged suite with the patient attention of a man who will not rush the person he is waiting for but also will not leave until that person is safely extracted from the disaster zone.
Miss Phillip breaks from her plumber-destruction to address us, her expression carrying genuine remorse beneath the administrative composure.
"I'm truly sorry about this, Holloway. I'll have the team assess the full extent of the damage and provide a timeline for repairs as soon as possible." She turns to Archie with the specific gratitude of a woman whose crisis has been partially resolved by a volunteer she did not have to recruit. "Thank you for being accommodating, Rosedale. I'll ensure the housing records are updated to reflect the temporary arrangement."
He nods. A single, economical dip of his chin that communicates acknowledgment without inviting further conversation.
I roll my suitcases toward the door, the wheels leaving tracks through the puddle that has now claimed approximately sixty percent of the common room's floor space. I am two steps from the threshold when both handles are lifted from my grip.
Archie takes the luggage from my hands before I can register the confiscation, his fingers closing around both handles simultaneously and redirecting both suitcases to his side with the smooth efficiency of a man whose strength makes carrying two bags feel like carrying zero bags.
"Hey—" I reach for the handles, the protest reflexive, my independence objecting to the assistance before my rationality can evaluate whether the assistance is warranted.
He is already walking. Through the doorway. Into the corridor. The suitcases rolling behind him in parallel tracks, hisstride unhurried but purposeful, his broad back receding down the hallway with the quiet authority of a man who has decided the current arrangement and does not consider it open for negotiation.
"Follow me," he says over his shoulder, the two words delivered with the same flat certainty he uses for everything: conclusive, minimal, leaving no conversational gap for objections to fill.
I stand in the doorway of my flooding dorm, wearing his shirt, surrounded by the sound of cascading water and Glen's increasingly frantic explanations and Miss Phillip's increasingly murderous silence.
