The world didn’t feel real anymore. Ace kept looking around his dorm room, expecting another version of Deuce or Yuu to show up and tell him the dream hadn’t ended, that he had to ‘wake up’ again. His foot tapped restlessly against the baseboard of his bed as he laid on his side with forced ease, trying and failing to go over some notes for final exams like everything was normal. Like the housewarden and vice housewarden of Diasomnia hadn’t been carted off to S.T.Y.X. only a few hours ago. Whispers were circulating all over the school, rumors almost as insane as the concept that they had managed to defeat Malleus Draconia in the first place. Ace hadn’t been there for the final showdown - had no idea what had actually happened beyond the glance he’d caught of Malleus’s broken horn. He’d heard Silver and Sebek had been sent to the hospital. Yuu had been shakenly clinging to a shockingly silent Grim and had only promised to tell him and Deuce everything tomorrow before they’d disappeared back to Ramshackle. Ace had choked down an offer to sleep over like he could still stitch his cool guy persona back together after what they’d seen in his dream. Now he was fighting the urge to drag Deuce over there and bang on the door until Yuu accepted the comfort of their friends. 

Ace wished the dorm room wasn’t so quiet. Ace wished the whole school didn’t feel so weird. Mostly Ace wished he didn’t feel so exposed in the almost empty room. Their other two roommates were out. Only Deuce was lingering in the corner of his eye, sitting at his desk, studying with about as much success as Ace himself, if he had to guess. Deuce tapped the back end of his pen against his notebook and Ace felt the sound of it thudding in the back of his skull.

“It’s quiet, huh?” Ace couldn’t stop himself from saying. He kept his eyes firmly trained on his notes as Deuce made a hum of agreement. He doodled a basketball on the corner of the page just to make it look like he was doing something. And, because Ace couldn’t keep his mouth shut, he kept talking, “you don’t think we should, like, check in with anyone, right?”

Deuce chewed on his bottom lip as he looked over at Ace. Ace could see him from the corner of his eye, though he refused to look up as he added a little hoop to his doodle, then a flamingo, then some random stars and card suits. He’d just finished coloring in a spade when Deuce sighed and glanced at his phone.

“I was texting with Jack and Epel, I think they’re fine. Epel was gonna hang at Savanaclaw tonight.” He didn’t have to say the rest. Ortho was probably needed at S.T.Y.X., Yuu had seemed like they wanted to be alone, and neither of them had Sebek’s number to check why he’d ended up at the hospital and if he was okay. There was no one else for them to check in with. Of course Deuce had already been texting their friends, always more considerate than Ace. The silence pressed back in as Ace covered the margins of his notes with meaningless, distracting symbols. “Are you okay?” Deuce asked hesitantly when Ace felt like he was going to explode from the quiet again.

His gaze finally shot up, finding Deuce staring at him with an unbearable amount of concern in his bright, teal eyes. Ace wondered when, during that silence, Deuce had turned his chair to face him - or rather, Ace’s chair. Ace couldn’t remember when they’d started doing it, studying so close together with Ace on his bed and Deuce at Ace’s desk so they could share homework answers and talk about nothing while they worked. They’d settled into the same routine tonight and now Ace couldn’t tell if he was grateful for the closeness or if he’d prefer Deuce sitting across the room at his own desk where he wouldn’t be able to see every microexpression that crossed Ace’s face.

“Yeah, dude, of course. I’m fine,” Ace forced out with a chuckle that he hoped sounded looser than it felt in his throat. He dropped his pen and flopped over onto his back so he didn’t have to keep looking at Deuce’s furrowed eyebrows and kicked puppy pout. A part of him wanted to be honest, to say no, but he wasn’t sure he could explain what wasn’t okay if he’d tried. They were fine, all their friends were alive, they’d somehow managed to come out of an overblot of one of the top mages in the world with barely a scratch on them, of course Ace was fine. They’d certainly been through worse than a short stint of living in a world where their deepest desires were real and sadness and fear didn’t exist. “I’d be better if I didn’t have to study for finals.”

Deuce grunted in annoyance, whether at Ace or at the concept of finals, Ace couldn’t be sure. For once, Ace was counting on Deuce being stupid enough to just believe him and drop it. As the silence stretched on, only interrupted by Deuce tapping his pen against the surface of the desk, Ace almost let out a sigh of relief. When he’d finally managed to tune out the tapping and go back to focusing on pretending to study, the heavy pages of Deuce’s textbook slammed shut. Ace’s eyes shot up to find his friend glaring down at the desk like he always did when he was struggling with a problem but determined to figure it out on his own without asking for help. But this time, his textbook was closed and he seemed to have pushed aside his notes some time ago.

“Thank you, by the way,” he rushed out as Ace opened his mouth to ask what was wrong. Staring down at the desk, Deuce couldn’t see the confusion that etched itself all over Ace’s face. His eyebrows furrowed tight enough to ache.

“For what?” Ace couldn’t help the incredulous edge that threaded through his voice. What could Deuce possibly be thanking him for? All he’d done was make everything harder for everyone by stubbornly refusing to face reality. Loathe as he was to admit it, Sebek had been right - Ace was nothing more than a childish jerk refusing to take his friends seriously.

“For saving our butts during the housewarden’s dream.” Deuce said it like it was obvious. Maybe it should have been. Ace had never been the kind of guy to miss an opportunity to brag about something awesome he’d done. In truth, he was still trying to process what he had done. It didn’t feel real. Nothing felt real. He looked around again for anyone trying to wake him up, for any sign of the darkness trying to coax him deeper into a selfish dream. “Your signature spell’s seriously sick, dude. Do you think it would work on my magic too?”

“I mean, probably? Your’s has gotta be way easier than Riddle’s, right?” Deuce had stood up and closed Ace’s notebook to sit on the bed with him. Ace had sat up to match him. He couldn’t remember either of them moving. He had been bragging about trying to steal Malleus’s magic in the rush of the showdown. How had he been doing that?

“Hey!” There was no genuine anger in the way Deuce punched his shoulder. Ace laughed like he was supposed to. It was nice - familiar, normal, real. “You know what woke me up?” Ace barely tilted his head, smirk still in place. “It was you. Or, I guess, the version of you in my dream. He was being really nice to me, that’s what got me. Of all the absurd things in my dream.”

“I–” Ace was a jerk. He hadn’t seen Deuce’s dream, but he knew how outlandish they could be - he’d gone through Trey’s horrorshow of a nightmare and seen his uptight housewarden breaking every rule imaginable. If Ace being nice was the insane thing that managed to break Deuce out of unreality, what did that say about Ace? “You must hate me.”

Ace didn’t mean to say it, didn’t mean to let the pathetic words slip out of his mouth. He’d meant to laugh it off like he would have before Lilia’s stupid farewell party had happened, before Malleus had bared everyone’s souls to each other, albeit unintentionally. Now, Deuce was staring at him like he’d just broken all 810 rules and blamed it on Deuce.

“What? Ace…” Deuce shifted on the bed, turning more fully to face Ace where they both sat cross-legged. He craned his neck down to try to catch Ace’s eyes and Ace only turned his head down further. He couldn’t bear seeing Deuce’s expression right now. A slow inhale of breath thundered through the room - too quiet, still too quiet. He couldn’t let Deuce keep talking, he couldn’t let Deuce tell him what he already knew, what Ace had already said himself.

“I mean, you’d probably like it if I was nicer, right? If I wasn’t such a jerk to you all the time?” Ace could’ve sworn he used to have better control over his mouth and the words that came out of it. Maybe he’d have to take it up with Malleus to find out if that was a side effect of prolonged exposure to his signature spell. He tried to rack his brain for something he could say that would return the situation to normal, to make it feel okay again. Anything that wouldn’t make him sound any more pathetic than he already did. He shouldn’t feel like this anymore. He had an awesome signature spell now, why couldn’t he just accept it was real? Why was he still expecting the darkness to take him back to that fake beach with those fake smiles and dead eyes? Why could he remember how uncanny it had all been now? Why didn’t he want to go back anymore?

“I mean, I guess it would be nice sometimes.” Deuce was talking again. Ace flinched when he remembered what question he was answering. “But it wouldn’t be you, you know?” He only got that crease on the bridge of his nose when he was thinking really hard about something, when he was being completely sincere and trying desperately to give something his full attention like it was important - Ace hated that he knew that. He hated that he had enough of Deuce’s facial expressions catalogued in his mind to know this was one of his favorites. “And I like you how you are now.”

Maybe Ace was still dreaming. Unyielding honestly had always been one of Deuce’s more annoying traits, but there was no way he just said that while his eyes flickered down toward Ace’s mouth. There was no way he didn’t realize what he’d just said while his eyes flickered down toward Ace’s mouth. Ace’s mouth, which was now hanging open like a dead fish. As Ace tried to get his jaw to hinge properly again, Deuce kept staring at him with that unreasonably sincere, worried look in his eyes like he hadn’t said anything out of place at all. It was fine, Ace could still figure this out - make this normal again.

“Are you finally admitting you like me, Juice?” The chuckle he meant to be teasing came out more like a cough. He put the back of his hand to his forehead and feinted swooning into Deuce. “I must still be dreaming.”

If Deuce’s face hadn’t flushed so fast, Ace might’ve missed it behind the hand that came up to linger between their faces, seemingly at war between covering Deuce’s face and shoving Ace off his shoulder. He’d meant to just scoff and roll back onto the bed, but the red hue of Deuce’s cheeks froze him in place, where he was staring up from the crook of Deuce’s neck, the bunched-up pink and leopard print fabric of Deuce’s hood digging uncomfortably into the back of his head. Finally, Deuce’s hand made up its mind, roughly pushing into Ace’s face, knocking him onto his back and off Deuce’s overly tense shoulder.

“Shut up.” When Ace sat up again, the hand that had pushed him was covering the bottom half of Deuce’s face, though Ace couldn’t help but stare in wonder at the red flush he could see peeking out over it. Teal eyes locked onto Ace’s again and Ace sat up straighter like they’d physically shocked him, his own face heating up against his will. Deuce dropped his hand to his lap, displaying his blush with far more courage than Ace had - always braver, always stronger. He was chewing on his bottom lip, still thinking hard about something. Ace had to stop looking at his mouth. “Seriously though, I know I’m not really good at this kind of thing but… I do like you, Ace. You’re my best friend. Of course I like you. Yeah, sometimes you suck and you’re really mean, but you’re not a jerk all the time. 

“Like, in your dream, nothing really changed for you, but Yuu got exactly what they wanted without having to leave us forever and I passed all my classes which we both know would be a miracle. That’s not something somebody who doesn’t care about their friends would dream about. I mean, my dream was way stupider than that. I know Sebek was giving you a hard time about it, but I get why you wanted to stay. It was… nice.”

Ace’s mouth opened and closed a few times in the too quiet of the room, trying to come up with something, anything to say to that.

“Damn, man. If you want to kiss me that bad, you could just ask.” Normal Ace response. Ace congratulated himself, then immediately felt stupid.

“Yeah, okay.” Not a normal Deuce response. A glint of determination sparked in Deuce’s gaze, like Ace had just issued a challenge. That couldn’t be good. 

The rational side of Ace’s brain scrambled for any way to change the subject. Another, more annoying, part of his brain was screaming with anticipation. All that could come from that mess was a strangled, “huh?” as Deuce scooted a bit closer.

“Can I kiss you?” Deuce asked so earnestly, that blaze of conviction still burning in his eyes, his eyebrows set in a firm line. He asked like it was a natural progression in their relationship, like Ace had been serious. Maybe it was, maybe he had. Ace still couldn’t find the darkness lurking in the corners of the room. It didn’t matter. If it was still a dream, if it wasn’t, if Ace deserved this, if anything would ever go back to normal again. Ace was done being a coward.

“You are so stupid,” was the last thing he muttered before curling his fists into the front of Deuce’s hoodie and pulling. The startled noise Deuce made was muffled by Ace’s lips.

Ace meant for the kiss to be quick, just to prove a point and pull away. But, as he went to pull back, Deuce's arms wrapped around his neck, holding him there. Deuce’s fingers tangled in the hair at the base of his neck. Deuce’s body leaned into his, letting Ace hold him up entirely. Deuce’s lips, rough and torn from bites and his ignorance of chapstick, were so warm. They stayed like that, lips clumsily pressing together, noses smashed against each other uncomfortably until Ace had to push Deuce back to suck in a breath. A beat of silence passed between them, a tangible thing Ace pushed through as he dove back in. The angle was better this time and Ace swallowed another noise Deuce made. Deuce pushed back too hard, too close, and they toppled over onto Ace’s bed, breaking their kiss.

They didn’t try again, too busy laughing as they laid side by side. It felt normal. It felt right. Ace didn’t glance around the room to look for the darkness again. That gnawing feeling still clung to Ace’s heart, but Deuce’s fingers tentatively laced themselves with his and it settled to a low ache. Deuce was smiling now the same way he had after their SDC performance, full of adrenaline and hope. Ace could feel his cheeks aching with how he returned it. 

“That was cool,” Deuce mumbled when their laughter had quieted down and it threatened to set Ace off again.

“Yeah, super cool, Deuce,” he managed to get out through his residual snickers, “that’s what I’d go with too.”

“Oh, shut up. You know what I mean.” Deuce rolled to knock their shoulders together with no real force. The gesture didn’t have quite the same effect with their hands still intertwined.

“Nah. You like when I’m mean. You told me.” Ace’s grin wasn’t reciprocated as Deuce’s expression scrunched in on itself. He was thinking again. Ace had said the wrong thing somehow. He went to pull his hand away, to sit up again, but Deuce’s grip only tightened, not letting him go.

“Are you actually okay?” The words finally tumbled from Deuce’s mouth, that dreaded concern back in his eyes.

“Not really,” Ace sighed, surprised at how easily the words came out, surprised that he wasn’t lying again, “but I will be.”