Chapter Text
Deuce Spade was in a whirlwind of trouble.
Not for the usual reasons, no. He’s been better with his anger, even if it scorched his skin and tainted his already susceptible heart.
Deuce Spade was in worse trouble.
He was in love.
No, the feeling wasn’t as sweet as people described. It swelled in his heart, made him choke on his own breath when he tried to breathe, made his mind hazy and vision blurred at the edges, made his face heat up (without the feeling of rage bubbling up as well and staining his image with more violence than necessary).
Worst of all? The recipient of his love was the same boy he wanted to strangle on certain (most) days.
But could you blame him? Times like now were the prime examples of how hard the redhead made it to not fall for him.
He was currently shuffling his favorite deck of playing cards while they sat in the greenhouse, the black and red color combination was the most memorable thing about them, given how much Ace talked about it. He spent almost ten whole minutes telling Deuce every little feature about the deck; They were waterproof, the joker had a rose design, and the cards had a nice texture to them.
Why did Deuce listen the whole ten minutes? Because those red-orange eyes that held so much bravado shined with such charm, Deuce couldn’t help but just sit and let the other boy talk. Even now, with Ace overexplaining a card trick, those eyes were glistening with excitement, something sweet and unheard of from the usually fiery freshman.
Deuce could always sort of sense emotions before he saw or felt them.
A soft, almost warm scent not unlike firewood was joy. He smelt it most in his childhood days, before his more.. Troubled times.
That spiced, almost acidic scent was anger. It soured deeper whenever it came from Deuce himself, and he could always taste that anger on his tongue like bile rising from his stomach.
Petrichor and lavender was sadness, the scent pleasantly deceptive. Fresh water and pine trees accompanied fear. So many scents, so many emotions, and only one was mildly unfamiliar.
This sickeningly sweet scent; not unlike raw honey in addictively sticky smell and similar to vanilla extract in bitter taste. The blue haired boy knew it as love. Blindingly beautiful, saccharine sweet, and tantalizingly tasty (Much like Ace and his annoyingly lovable antics).
He learned it came from his mother, at first, but it began to spread to his roommate.
And then, the redhead was the most obnoxious one in the room for that sickeningly sweet scent instead of his loudmouth (for once).
So yes, maybe his nose stung due to that lovely scent, but he wouldn’t dream of it being any different. Not when Ace was so close, looking at his cards with such a loving, reverent gaze. Not when those calloused hands flipped through cards with practiced ease, pulling out a pair of cards that Deuce wouldn’t be able to identify, not with his head clouded with admiration.
It was wholly unfair. Ace was so gentle with his deck and nothing else (even when the blue haired boy begged silently for that gentleness to be shown to him next), when he told Deuce to pick a card for about the millionth time, the blue haired boy just lazily pressed his index against one of the cards and Ace–helpfully–slid it upwards so it’d be more easily accessible. The card was, funnily enough, a two of spades. Deuce Spade unknowingly picked out the two of spades. Hah.
After placing his card back in the deck, Ace paused for a moment before pulling out that exact two of spades, a triumphant grin on his face that Deuce could feel deep in his bones; warmth, firewood, honey and vanilla extract..
But that grin softened into a smile as the idiotic redhead suddenly made said card “disappear” in front of his very eyes, making Deuce scrunch his face up in confusion at the sudden disappearance of the card.
“Juice, you know you don’t have to keep watching me do this, right? It ain’t gonna bring your present to you any faster.” Ace muttered, elbowing Deuce in the side and revelling in the startled yelp that followed.
Deuce pressed his lips together in a firm line and just rolled his eyes, not even having the energy to correct the boy. “Well can you blame a guy for being antsy? You’ve been teasing it for three days, Ace.” The boy was obviously a bit excited, he’d–admittedly–been extremely fidgety and almost inconsolable the whole damn day.
He tugged on his own hair during breakfast–earning a slap on the hand from Ace, he pinched his skin during class–earning a light punch to the rib, and he even bit his lip until it bled during lunch–earning a gentle slap on the cheek from Cater to make him stop.
Ace gave the other a pointed look, clearly unhappy with that response, an almost annoyed expression on his face. But the redhead smelt more of exasperation than anger, so he assumed he was in the clear for now.
Deuce was about to open his mouth before the other boy got up abruptly from his spot beside the other boy on the bench, placing his cards down and just standing in front of him with his hands dragging down his face accompanied with a groan of annoyance.
“Fine Juice, since you can’t wait for longer than a second!” Ace grumbled, but most certainly didn’t mean anything by it, not with the way his lips quivered upward just enough to show his teeth.
Deuce, once again, had no time to say shit because he felt the sudden warmth of Ace’s hands–or hand, considering one of his gloves stayed firm on his hand– on his face, cradling carefully.
“Don’t say a word about this, Juice. And happy birthday.”
Those grumbled words were barely being filtered through, and Deuce uselessly squirmed a bit before Ace surged forward, dressing his lips unbearably close to Deuce’s own pair, but narrowly missing and hitting the corner of his mouth instead, causing the blue haired boy to freeze up, face heating in an instant.
“What–?” Deuce choked out before Ace just scoffed at his own misalignment before squeezing his hands around Deuce’s face.
“I missed, shut the hell up and hold still this time, yeah?”
That soft tone turned his bones into jelly in an instant.
And with another blur of movement, Ace connected their lips in a searing kiss. Gentleness forgotten with the rush of movement, the desperation to just get it all over with. But this was Deuce’s first kiss, and he had to savor it, no?
With the need of a starved man looking at a perfectly portioned meal, Deuce grabbed Ace’s wrists, a silent attempt at begging them to stay connected just a bit longer. Those soft lips moved against his own without a care in the world, and that sickeningly sweet stench filled his nostrils as he hummed in pure delight at the idea of his first kiss being Ace Trappola. His birthday gift was Ace Trappola.
But that high could only be ridden for so long, and Ace pulled away with a soft gasp, just staring down at the other boy before grinning once again. “Much better.” He muttered and slid back down to the seat next to him, pulling his hands away and going right back to shuffling his deck.
“Oh, and your gift is coming tomorrow, that was just compensation for it being late.”