I follow his gaze.
The hallway connecting our bedrooms to the common area is a short corridor of institutional carpeting and cream-painted walls, unremarkable in every way except for the fact that the carpet is no longer its original color. A spreading stain of dark moisture is advancing from the direction of the bathroom, the saturated fibers releasing water in a slow, expanding pool that has already crossed the hallway's midpoint and is creeping toward the common room's threshold with the unhurried determination of a natural disaster that knows it has all day.
"Oh shit." Jace sets down his juice glass. "Is our dorm leaking?"
We both blink at the advancing water.
The puddle has reached the transition strip between the hallway carpet and the common room's tile floor, the moisture seeping through the metal barrier with the quiet insistence of a problem that has been developing behind closed doors and has now introduced itself to the rest of the household.
"Oh FUCK!"
The exclamation leaves both of us simultaneously, a synchronized eruption of alarm that launches us off our respective perches and into the hallway where the water is nowankle-deep in front of the bathroom door and showing no signs of establishing a boundary.
I yank the bathroom door open.
Water cascades out with the enthusiasm of a river that has discovered a new outlet, the volume suggesting that whatever pipe has failed behind the wall has been failing for significantly longer than the puddle's recent appearance in our hallway would suggest. The bathroom floor is a shallow lake. The bath mat is a sodden island. The toilet is operating as a fountain that its designers did not intend. And the pipe beneath the sink is producing a spray of pressurized water that arcs across the room with the cheerful trajectory of a garden sprinkler set to its most destructive setting.
"Get towels!" I shout, already wading into the bathroom with the grim determination of a woman who has survived arranged marriage attempts and predatory Alphas and a man who bit her lip in a locker room, and will not be defeated by plumbing.
"We don't HAVE enough towels for this!" Jace calls from behind me, his voice carrying the specific pitch of a man who is simultaneously trying to contact maintenance on his phone and stack textbooks on the common room floor to create elevated surfaces for electronics that are about to be in the splash zone.
I grab the shut-off valve beneath the sink and wrench it clockwise with the grip strength that Archie's chest learned to respect during our bed-wrestling incident. The pipe shudders, protests, and surrenders its spray in grudging increments until the flow reduces to a drip and the bathroom exhales into relative silence.
My feet are submerged. My socks are casualties. The analytics report I was reading upside down on the couch is probably absorbing moisture from the puddle's leading edge as we speak.
And Archie's tank top, draped over the arm of the couch in the splash zone's direct path, is about to receive the wash cycle I refused to give it.
"The tank!" I lunge back into the common room, sloshing through the hallway puddle, and snatch the black fabric off the couch arm a heartbeat before the water reaches it. I clutch it against my chest with a protectiveness that Jace observes from his position atop the kitchen counter where he has retreated with his phone and his juice glass and the elevated perspective of a man who has chosen survival over solidarity.
He stares at me.
At the soaked floor. At my drenched socks. At the tank top pressed against my sternum with both arms like I am shielding a small child from an explosion.
"You just waded through a flood to save a sweaty tank top."
"It's evidence!"
"Evidence of what?!"
"Of the bet! If I wash it, he'll say the bet doesn't count because I tampered with the terms!"
"That makes absolutely no sense, Sage."
"It makes PERFECT sense, and I don't need to justify my decisions to a man who is sitting on the kitchen counter drinking juice while our dorm drowns!"
He takes a calm sip of his orange juice, unbothered.
"Maintenance is on the way. I called while you were performing aquatic rescue operations on an Alpha's laundry." He gestures at the hallway with his glass. "Burst pipe. Common issue in older dorm buildings, apparently. They'll send someone within the hour."
"Within the HOUR?"
"The hour."
I look at the water. At the saturated carpet. At the bathroom that is currently functioning as an indoor pond. At my ruinedsocks and my soaked sweatpants and the analytics report that is probably dissolving into pulp on the common room floor.
At Archie's tank top, dry and safe and still reeking of cedarwood, clutched against my chest like a talisman.
Jace is watching me with an expression that communicates volumes about the conclusions he is drawing from my rescue priorities and the silence he is maintaining out of respect for our friendship and the certainty that he will bring this up at the most inconvenient possible moment in the future.
