Chapter Text
There was a door in the Heartslabyul lounge where there hadn’t been before.
Ace squatted in front of it, cocked his head. It was short, about knee-high, something you’d have to lay on the floor to even access. It didn’t match the decor of the dorm at all; while the rest of the room was that Queen of Hearts brand of whimsical, all deep reds and checkered floors, the door was almost medieval, desaturated wood in a pentagonal stone frame with a large gold doorknob. It stood out like a sore thumb in the lounge, almost like whoever had built it was asking for someone to notice.
On instinct, Ace felt his hand reaching towards the handle. The way the keyhole and screws were positioned, it almost looked like it had a little face, eyes and a mouth and a big round knob nose. One twist of that nose was all it would take to satiate his curiosity.
No. He yanked his hand back, digging his nails into his palms. Sure, he hadn’t noticed when this door was built, but no matter the purpose it served-- hedgehog pen, teacup cabinet, Trey’s hat locker-- the fact no one had told him about it meant it was probably off-limits. If he were to open it, Riddle would have his head for sure, and he did not plan on spending the rest of the quarantine collared. He had better things to do.
He got up off the floor, slowly turning around to survey the empty lounge.
What better things did he have to do, again?
Ace never had any problem entertaining himself. If he had free time, which he had often thanks to his aversion to homework, he could always turn back to a long list of options. Head to the gym and practice shooting baskets, take a run on the quad, hang out with the other freshmen and the Prefect in the cafeteria, even visit the village outside of campus and chat up some girls in a store somewhere.
The trouble was, all of those activities happened outside of the Heartslabyul dorm, and for the foreseeable future, he couldn’t leave.
In fact, no one in the entire student body could leave their respective dorms. When the Headmaster had explained the situation, most of it had been lost on Ace, but he’d caught the gist, which was that the Shroud brothers had gone home to the Island of Woe over spring break and accidentally brought back a stowaway in their luggage.
That stowaway was a phantom.
Ace didn’t see the big deal. He and Deuce had beaten a phantom to a pulp barely a week into the school year (not before it had beaten them quite thoroughly first, though). But no matter how much he protested, the verdict was still the same: all Night Raven College students would be quarantined to their dorms until the faculty could locate and contain the trespassing phantom.
Now, stuck in Heartslabyul, Ace’s plethora of fun things to do had dwindled down shorter than a sparse grocery list. He’d dribbled his basketball until Deuce yelled at him to stop (the guy was actually studying , Ace could hardly believe it). He’d played some solitaire and gotten sick of it, but there were too many roommates in the dorm room for the kind of solitaire he preferred, the one he played in the bathroom with the faucet running. Instead, he’d taken his deck of cards and performed tricks for all the students in his vicinity until every single boy in Heartslabyul knew exactly which sleeve he stuck his cards up. He checked his phone, then refreshed Magicam and checked it again, swiping and swiping until his eyes glazed over. He’d walked himself up and down the nonsensical halls of Heartslabyul until he wound up in the lounge, where a novel but forbidden door checked off the last possible item on the list of things he could do with his day.
Horror of horrors, Ace Trappola was bored.
Maybe there was a chore he could get a jump on. It wasn’t his turn to wash the flamingos for a while, and he’d already fed the hedgehogs last night, but there were always the roses. What was the last time anybody had trimmed those things? Surely they had to be a gangly mess by now. Ace was willing to bet that if he took the initiative, then waved it under Riddle’s nose a little, he might get some commendation for his diligence… hopefully, a commendation that came with something better to do with his time.
His spirits lifted somewhat, Ace started his walk towards the garden entrance, a newfound spring in his step. He’d never tried to trim the rosebushes before, but he was sure it couldn’t be that hard, just a little artful snipping. There was no task he couldn’t pick up if he tried. Sure, he had to find the garden tools first, but that couldn’t be hard either, could it?
Right?
A foot from the glass door, he paused. Where did they keep the garden tools? Did they have some kind of shed, or--
Ace’s thoughts were interrupted by a low rumble, then a resounding BOOM that shook the floor beneath him. In the blink of an eye, the normally cheerful blue sky of Heartslabyul turned dark and unleashed a torrent of rain onto the pristine garden outside.
“Wh-- what?! ” Ace sputtered, pressing his hands to the glass. In almost a year at Night Raven, he’d never seen it rain in Heartslabyul. He didn’t even know the weather could change. All of the school’s dorms were built in magically climate-regulated pocket dimensions; that should’ve eliminated any chance for flash thunderstorms.
“Ace Trappola, is there a reason you’re getting fingerprints on our windows, or are you just enjoying the view?”
Ace nearly jumped out of his skin, whirling around to face his Housewarden. Ordinarily, Riddle had him trained like a dog; even the mere echo of his heels on the tiles was enough to straighten Ace’s spine and zip his mouth closed. He must’ve missed the sound of his approach over the thunder.
“Riddle-- er, Housewarden,” Ace replied, maybe a little too loud. “Hey, great timing, I was just gonna ask you something.”
Riddle raised an eyebrow, well aware that his arrival had not been great timing. “You were?”
Ace faked a grin. “Yeah. See, since I got so much time on my hands now, what with the quarantine and all, I figured I could do a little housekeeping, since that’s something you’d appreciate, you know, me spending my time productively and all--”
“If you’re going to spout off at such length, Ace, you might as well curtsy while you’re speaking. It saves time.”
Ace blinked, unsure if he was joking. Did Riddle joke now? Was that a thing Trey taught him to do? Just to be on the safe side, he bent his knees a little, then continued. “Yeah, anyway, I was gonna go trim the rosebushes, but I’m not really sure where the tools are, so--”
“Excuse you, you were going to trim the rosebushes? ” Riddle barked, face twisting into the early signs of his trademark rage.
Ace took a sharp breath, backed away a bit. “Is that… not a thing I’m allowed to do?”
Riddle’s fists balled up, then loosened a little. He inhaled deeply, seemingly composing himself, muttering something under his breath that Ace couldn’t make out. “Ace,” Riddle sighed. “I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me why you can’t go tend the garden right now.”
Oh no. When Riddle said things like that, it meant he wanted a recitation from the rulebook. Every Heartslabyul student was required to memorize all 810 of the Queen of Hearts’s rules, but Ace had never gotten around to it. Even the Vice Housewarden himself had only made it through a hundred or so; how was Ace supposed to manage? But now, of course, he was subject to one of Riddle’s pop quizzes, and he was going to have to own up.
Unless, of course, he could bluff.
With a casual smile, he said, “Oh, yeah, Queen’s rules and all that. I know which one applies here, but c’mon, Riddle, you’re such an expert that I’d just be preaching to the choir if I recited it now. You know that I know, you know?”
Riddle narrowed his eyes. “It’s not because of a rule.”
“Oh.”
“It’s because I know that if I let you out in that rain and you make your attempt at gardening, you’re going to come back in here with mud all over your boots and track it up and down our freshly-polished floors, and I doubt you want to spend your quarantine scrubbing them clean. Isn’t that right?”
Ace’s jaw dropped. “No, wait, I promise I’ll wipe my shoes before I walk inside, just let me--”
“Absolutely not.” Riddle pushed past Ace and wiped the fingerprints off the window with his cape. “If you feel such a strong need to impress me by using your time productively , I suggest you study like Deuce. I don’t know of a single teacher in this school that would excuse classwork over something as trivial as a mass quarantine.”
“ Trivial? ” Ace squeaked.
Riddle stepped back, gave Ace a cold once-over, then quickly straightened his underclassman’s lapels before turning and walking off, the click, click, click, of his stiletto heels trailing him down the halls. “Get to work, Ace Trappola.”
Ace stood shellshocked for longer than he liked to admit. When he was finally certain Riddle was out of earshot, he shook himself out of it, flipping up his jacket lapels out of spite. “ Get to work, Ace Trappola ,” he scoffed. “ Kiss my boots, Ace Trappola. Never have any fun, Ace Trappola. Curtsy when you’re speaking, Ace Trappola, it saves time. What was that crack even about? Whatever. He’s not the boss of me.”
Ace knew full well that Riddle was, in fact, the boss of him. But that wasn’t going to stop him from going into that garden, even in the pouring rain. Now, the only hurdle he had left to jump was figuring out where the tools were stored.
Someone in this dorm had to cut him some slack.