Chapter Text
Dream would probably consider himself lucky.
He found luck in quite a few things - finding a twenty dollar bill on the sidewalk every few days, always enough power on his phone when he forgets to charge it the night before, his knives never missing a shot, and his punches always hitting where he wanted them to, etc. That sort of thing. In an argument, Dream would be the first to admit, he was unnaturally lucky.
But right now, if there was ever any ounce of luck in his bloodstream, he’s pretty sure he lost it in the burning building behind him.
“Not to say that I’m prone to attracting, like, arsonists, but three in a row is kind of worrying,” a girl with big glasses tells Dream when he zones back in for the first time in at least ten minutes, and he does a double take when he registers her words. Arsonists. Right. Of course. “Maybe it’s because I like candles. Scented ones are nice, you know. For baths.”
He tries to blink back to - whatever “conversation” (Dream standing there while she talked his ear off) he was having with the lady he had rescued, while trying to ignore the dull ache radiating from his wrist. One would think, after an extremely difficult task of retrieving half a family and a few pets from a burning building, Dream would be able to maybe relax for a few minutes, maybe have a smoothie, whatever, but apparently not, as this lady would not stop talking since he swung her down from her apartment eight stories up.
“Should’ve known Damien was no different,” she shakes her head, a disdainful look on her face. “Brought me aconites to our first date. Who brings aconites?” The lady huffs. “All men do is disappoint.”
“Men are pretty bad,” Dream nods, absentmindedly agreeing. Most men were probably not serial arsonists, but in this day in age, no one could really tell anymore.
She seems to realize he is also a man, at that moment. “Oh, you don’t count!” The lady chirps, patting where his cheek is underneath the smiley-face mask. “You’re a godsend, although you could have also saved my bonsai while you were up there. I forgot to grab it while I was panicking.”
Dream blinks. “My bad.”
He’s really starting to doubt his choice of staying behind with the people he’d rescued. It isn’t unlike him to linger until the police finally arrived, just in case anything else occurred, and there isn’t much to regret when those minutes of waiting were usually spent by people thanking him and asking a few questions. But seriously, this lady was starting to push it, and the pain aching from his wrist was not helping. He definitely sprained it.
Thankfully, Dream does not need to entertain her any longer when the sound of police alarms become quite loud rather quickly. Really, Dream doesn’t understand what the point was anymore when he had already saved everyone, and the fire department had done their job of hosing away the flames. Dream wouldn’t be as praised as he is if he was a fifteen-minute-late hero.
When an officer jogs up to the group of now-apartment-less people Dream had stuck with, Dream turns to the lady. “What’d you say his name was again?”
The lady pauses in the middle of her sentence. “Who? My bonsai?”
He tries not to facepalm. “No, the - your boyfriend’s name. You know, the person who set the fire bomb?”
“Oh,” the lady nods in understanding. “Damien Bloomfield, but really, it should be Damien Boom-field, if you get what I’m getting at.” She laughs at her own joke, multiple people around her groaning, and doesn’t notice when Dream hurries away.
“Damien Bloomfield is your man,” Dream quickly tells the approaching officer - one he’s familiar with, Phil or something of the like, patting his shoulder with his good hand when he passes. “Also, sixteen minutes late? Must be a world record.”
“Fuck off,” he scowls, and walks over to the crowd, many of who start to complain, and thankfully, no longer pay attention to Dream.
Who does pay attention to him are the multiple reporters who climb quickly out of their vans, after following closely with the police cars. Cameras and microphones are almost immediately shoved in his face when he starts to walk away, as well as women and men with loud voices and pressed frown lines. Usually, many watching civilians follow, but the fire bomb had been loud enough to scare away half the street, the other half being smart enough to stay away from a burning, twelve-story building.
“Dream, who do you believe to be behind this terrorist attack?”
“Did you know this was coming?”
“Was this a planned attack?”
“Dream, is it possible the infamous Technoblade is behind this?”
“Technoblade?” Dream snorts, adjusting his gloves as he quickened his pace. They were fingerless, sure, defeating all purpose of what gloves are actually for, but they made him look cool, fuck you. “Technoblade wouldn’t attack innocent people. Plus, his crimes are usually creative.”
Their voices collectively get louder, it seems. “Is that to say Techno’s attacks are justified?” A woman in a red skirt with red lipstick asks, flashy eyes when she glares at him.
“Obviously not.” He glares back, although it’s essentially pointless when they can’t see his eyes behind his mask, but it’s the thought that counts. “I don’t support murder. Him and Ranboo covering the entirety of city hall’s floor with ice was kind of funny, though.” More microphones are shoved into his face, and he moves back, grimacing, which they could definitely see.
“Are you a supporter of Technoblade’s actions?” Multiple people chorus at once.
“I - what? No, where did you even get that idea?” He exclaims, cringing when the microphones inch closer to him. One of them bumps into his mask, and he almost wishes he was burned alive earlier. "I'm the one who put him in jail! Before he broke out I mean, but still."
“Dream, did you -”
“How did you -”
“Where is -”
"Who will -"
Hundreds of voices pounce on him after that, and he takes this as a cue to leave as quickly as possible, before he says something worse and gets him in trouble with Wilbur. Although, really, Dream hasn’t said anything the people don’t know about him already.
“Sorry, I've got to go." He leans away from two more microphones. "My dog," he fumbles, "needs watering. Walking. Close enough," Dream grimaces, ducking under arms as he slips out of the crowd. The cameras attempt to follow him, but Dream has always been too slick to be followed - it’s most of the reason why he’s able to be a hero in this city, with the police being unable to properly catch up with him; if you can’t beat them, join them, they say, and the police took it to heart. It was probably a good thing, just this once.
He slinks behind a dark alley, pouncing onto the top of a dumpster, steady under his shoes, and he climbs atop the roof of a building, gritting his teeth when his wrist screams in pain while he hoists himself up.
He draws his hood up as he peers back to the growing crowd of people, consisting of those that have realized the building is no longer on fire and they’ve got a chance at being on television. He raises his eyebrows as he watches the same lady with the big glasses chat animatedly into a microphone, the news reporter looking increasingly frustrated, and Dream laughs under his breath.
As he takes a running leap to another building’s rooftop, he rolls his wrist and winces. Contrary to popular belief, Dream wasn’t a superhero; there was nothing super about him. Maybe the ability to never miss a shot was a superpower to others, but to him, it was all calculations. Essentially math in a different form, whatever. He's never been quite super in any sense.
A hero, however, he was probably to some people, but he could never bear to title himself that. Dream just wanted to help people.
It’s midday, almost two o’clock, his phone tells him when he finally approaches the building where he’d placed his backpack. There’s only one new text since his class from this morning, from Sapnap asking for him to buy kiwis when he comes home.
His wrist hurts when he unties his mask from his face, and shoves it into his backpack.
me
why do we need kiwis
neither of us eat kiwis wtf
sapnap
i fucking eat kiwis
He breathes a laugh, and tucks his phone away.
With that, Clay finds his way back home, hopping from rooftop to rooftop.
“Long day?” Bad asks when he’s taking Clay’s order, notepad in his hand. Clay’s head is on the table, which was probably not the best idea. Still, the coolness of the table made him feel better, and he was too lazy to lift his head up. He kind of wants to fall asleep.
“Yeah, sort of,” Clay quirks his lips upward, and shoves his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “Just a weird morning, I guess.” Jumping into a burning apartment was considered weird, probably. Clay’s standards for weird were kind of fucked up after becoming Dream.
Bad nods understandingly, because he probably could understand in his own terms. Bad was cool that way. “I know what you mean. Anything to do with the fire this morning?”
Clay quickly plasters a look of concern and shock onto his face. He's definitely perfected the art of acting at this point. He should've gone to Broadway. “What? What fire?”
“You don’t know? There was this fire bomb down on sixteenth! Thankfully, no one got hurt since Dream was really quick to get everyone out, but it was a real scare,” Bad explains to a man who had already experienced it firsthand. Not that he needs to know that. “Turns out it was some guy who’d gotten mad at his girlfriend’s plant obsession.”
He hadn’t known that bit; Clay had blocked out the lady’s voice after she started talking about the many technicalities that came to mating plants. “That’s,” he pauses, “not too far from what I would expect, actually. This city is so fucking weird.”
“Clay, language,” Bad prods him with his pen, gesturing to a family with three toddlers eating a few booths away. “But I know what you mean. Remember that guy who spray painted the McDonald’s logo green last week?”
“Oh, that wasn’t even the weirdest from this month,” he shakes his head, lightly laughing. They still haven’t been able to remove all the paint. “Honestly, I prefer it that way.”
“Yeah,” Bad agrees. “The green makes it look more calm, I think. Anyways, we’re not supposed to discuss other restaurants here, so what would you like today?”
After a quick trip from the grocery store and his apartment shared with Sapnap, Clay had headed to this diner pretty fast, especially after a whole morning gone without breakfast. He ate a few ramen cups around five a.m., however, when he’d been completing his reading for one of his English classes. Maybe that was the life of a college student - living life like he had no idea what a human body needs to function.
Nonetheless, this was familiar; coming after a mission for a late lunch, or an early dinner, and hanging out with Bad while Clay stuffs his face with fries. It might have become a ritual at this point, having started all the way back in freshman year, when Clay had his first fight.
He’d come in, mostly because he had just ran away from someone who: one, he had gotten into a fight with (what was Clay supposed to do, watch the guy mug a girl?), and two, had definitely seen Dream’s face. This was also the place he had met Wilbur, who had trailed behind him after watching him return the girl’s purse, and offered him a job of saving people. He’d also offered the idea of a mask, which Dream had genuinely not thought of. Seriously, who wore masks, besides, like, Spiderman?
Just a short while after that, Clay had become friends with Bad, who often waitered when he came in and gave him discounts on food. He may be a hero of sorts, but he was also a college student (see: desperate for cheap food). Saving people didn’t particularly make him rich.
“We get a new guy tomorrow,” Bad says when he joins Clay on his break.
“Oh, wow,” he swallows a glob of fries, “I just realized that there’s only one other waiter.”
“Yeah,” Bad nods, “business has been picking up lately, so it’s been a struggle between just two people.” Bad pulls out his own snack, a pack of peanut M&M’s, and gestures to Clay’s wrist, which he had clumsily bandaged. “What’s that about?”
“Ah, nothing.” Clay waves it off, smiling easily. “Was helping someone carry their boxes into their car and I hurt myself.”
Bad chuckles. “Of course you hurt yourself from helping someone. Clay, our own personal hero.” Clay rolls his eyes, and shoves a handful of fries into his mouth.
“It was no big deal.”
There is much to assume about a man like Wilbur Soot.
When Dream had first met Wilbur as Clay - Clay, Dream hadn’t been quite formed yet - he was still high from adrenaline, bloody knuckles, and needing to stop at some place that had food and held no one that knew him. Coincidentally, it was the first time he had stepped into the diner, and the same day Clay had met Bad. Dream may be lucky, but that day, Clay had never been luckier.
That’s what he reminds himself sometimes, when he forgets that meeting Wilbur was probably good luck, because at certain times, it was easy to forget.
Like right now.
“Despite the massive dub this morning, we have a new mission for you,” are the first words past Wilbur’s lips, leaned back in his chair as he stares at Dream. His hair is messy in the way that someone would spend hours in front of a mirror to perfect. Wilbur probably woke up like that. Asshole.
“Already?” Dream sighs, exhaustion weighing down his bones. Maybe he did sign up for this, but two years ago he didn’t realize how helpless society really was. The other day, some guy needed help opening his pickle jar, which, although it may be a task achieved by a handful of people on the planet, was Dream the one that had to help him? Really? “Is it at least something important? I’ve got an essay coming up.”
“Oh, Dream, you know we only ever save the important stuff for you,” Wilbur tells him sweetly, playing with a pen.
“You called me to kill a spider in your bathroom yesterday,” he replies dryly. Wilbur grins.
“As I said, only the most important missions. Anyhow, we are not here to discuss the priority of this, since time is quite a player in this game.” He scoots closer to his desk, and pulls open a folder - a manilla, plain one, like as if they were in a spy movie or something, Confidential stamped on the cover in red. Dream indulges him, and tugs the folder closer.
The words 404 face him when he opens it, in daunting New Times Roman font.
“‘404’? Did your internet go out?” He halfheartedly jokes, looking up from the page to be met with Wilbur’s smug look. “Why are you looking at me like that.”
“I think this is going to cater to your interests,” Wilbur answers, vague and slightly ominous, as he always is. “This is something edgy. Cool, you know, rebellious. Nothing is more rebellious than stealing.”
“Sure,” Dream agrees easily, slowly nodding. He, along with half the population, has dipped into the occasional thievery. Possibly also arson. He was a man from Florida, after all.
“This guy,” he turns the first page, revealing a black and white, blurry shot of a man leaning over to grab a huge frame of a painting. The room is dark, and his figure is barely traceable, smudged by the lack of light. The words 404 are printed underneath it, and this still does not answer a single question in Dream’s head. Wilbur taps the figure with the end of his pen. “This guy is rebellious.”
“You want me to catch a robber for you?” Dream questions, squinting at the blurry outline of the man. “You said this was interesting. I caught that one guy last week, the one who stole vintage shoelaces - what the fuck was that, by the way?”
“Dream, I don’t want you to catch him.” Wilbur rolls his eyes, before pausing. “Well, no, I do want you to catch him, but also convince him.”
This piques Dream’s interest.
“To what?”
“Join us.” Wilbur’s smug expression turns even smugger, if that was possible.
It takes only a few seconds for Dream’s mind to connect the dots. He raises his eyebrows. “This guy outsmarted you, huh?”
Wilbur blinks at him, before pink slowly crawls up his neck. “I - no, he did not! He’s just good, and I thought, well, obviously I thought it would be a good idea to have him on our side, considering how easily he slips past security and steals million-dollar art,” he fumbles to explain, all while looking like a tomato. Dream huffs a laugh.
“Oh, so it’s like recruiting me all over again,” he says, attention back to the folder.
“You weren’t stealing incredibly pricey art, but sure.” Wilbur shakes his head, slouching back in his chair.
“What’s up with that name, by the way,” Dream cuts in, still flipping through the pages inside the folder. Most just held missing artworks that 404 had stolen, consisting of paintings more than anything else. “‘404’? Is that like a bad connection to the WiFi sort of joke or -”
“We are running on his schedule, considering he works for others,” Wilbur says, ignoring Dream like he usually does. “He seems to work in a two-week period, which,” he says at Dream’s skeptical expression, “although it may seem naive to do so, 404 seems to know what he’s doing, especially since he still hasn’t been caught in the act yet. Coincidentally, it’s been two weeks since he last stole something, and we suspect he may try to retrieve one of the more pricier artworks this time around.” At these words, he flips to another page, in which a stock photo of a vase is printed in color. Dream was a huge fan of art, sure, he had a whole account dedicated to the fanart he gets from time to time, but this -
This just looked like something he’d get from IKEA.
“I don’t know what this is.”
Wilbur sighs. “Unsurprising. This is a vase, bidding up to seventeen million dollars. Not all that pricey, considering some of the past things 404 has stolen in the past, but it’s suspected to rise in value exponentially in the next year. It was found back in 2017, actually, but archeologists actually suspect it to have been…”
Dream zones out, like he does sometimes when Wilbur goes on these sort of monologues. Maybe the details sometimes come in handy, but really, he didn’t care much about the artwork itself. Any sort of detail that wasn’t prevalent to the mission usually went haywire in Dream’s head.
He can’t get over this guy’s name. Was it pronounced four-o-four or four hundred and four? Not to mention the incredibly bad image of him, there was probably a better picture of this guy somewhere on Google, right? Dream couldn’t even make out the man’s figure, but then again, he considers, maybe he doesn’t need to know what he looks like when trying to find him. Someone trespassing an art gallery in the middle of the night was probably a big enough indicator.
“...but that’s not even mentioning the multiple sex parties they probably threw back then.” Dream nods along, pretending to have followed every word, but by Wilbur’s raised eyebrow, it probably hadn’t worked. “You weren’t even listening.”
“Was too,” Dream argues, crossing his arms.
Wilbur stares at him, before giving him a disapproving look. “Nevermind, it doesn’t particularly matter right now. I’ll be honest, we were never going to actually arrest this man, mostly because thievery isn’t in our league, and I'm a huge fan of fun, harmless crime -" Dream often wonders how Wilbur was the leader of a superhero league "- but the police are on my ass about it since it makes them look bad, but they always look bad,” he explains. “Recruiting him is the best next thing, I think. I don’t want to arrest him; he’s harmless and smart! Personally, I find it fun - apparently, he spray painted dicks on a bunch of Picasso paintings in a museum located in New York, last time!" Wilbur recalls excitedly. "Very fun, indeed.”
Dream does remember hearing about that from Bad, after receiving much backlash for not catching this guy when he hadn’t even heard of this man until now. He had brushed it off at the time, but now Dream almost regretted it. “Wasn’t fun for me - everyone hated me that day. As if I knew anything about it, I can’t - I don’t even live in New York!”
“Not your fault everyone thinks you’re involved with criminality,” Wilbur says easily. “You’ve got that mischievous dark-side aura to you, it’s very sexy.”
Dream blinks. “What?”
“There are a few things we need you to follow if you’re going to catch him, however,” Wilbur continues, ignoring Dream’s panic. “For one, you can’t hurt him, because that may waver his willingness to work with us. Unlike the government, we aren’t one for threatening persuasion,” he makes a face at the thought, and continues. Dream tries very hard to follow.
“Seriously, Wilbur, I've been working here for two years. I know this.”
“Tell me once you've completed a mission without hurting anyone," Wilbur asks him, with a look that says he doesn't quite expect an answer.
Dream answers him anyways. "That time that one guy got stuck in a window," he remembers.
Wilbur doesn't look impressed. "You dropped a book on the construction worker that was working on the sidewalk."
Dream grimaces. "I forgot about that." It wasn't his fault he dropped a college textbook - it was unnaturally heavy, and why the guy thought using a textbook to get himself out of the window was a good idea was beyond him.
“Another thing," Wilbur continues, and Dream keeps his mouth shut this time, "we need to have him approach us, but make it known we want him. As in, let him know we won’t arrest him or something of the sort. If he puts up a fight, try not to fight back. Also make sure not to hurt the artwork. Don’t get irritated with him. Don’t give away your inner thoughts, as he may use those against you; we actually don’t have much on this man, except for that he isn’t stealing these for himself. Just - try to be a salesman of this organization to him. A salesman, except less annoying. Try charming.”
“Charming salesman, got it,” Dream notes, along with the fifty other things Wilbur had listed.
“If you hurt him, I’ll hurt you.” Wilbur reminds him.
“You are literally a stick on legs,” Dream says, not unkindly. Maybe a little unkindly.
“I’ll hurt you emotionally,” Wilbur clarifies, which is much more on-brand for him.
“Oh.”
“We suspect him to break into the Meadow Museum tonight, around three a.m., but we want you there by midnight. You’ll have no back up, since we want you to be as welcoming as possible while also, of course, making sure the vase doesn’t get stolen,” Wilbur explains.
Dream pauses. “Tonight?”
“Not much time to prepare, but it was a recent decision to have you go after him.” Wilbur seems unperturbed, shrugging. “We can give you a quick rundown on some more details when the time comes, but there’s not much we can offer. 404 is relatively new, and smart enough to not let any information slip. Do you have any questions?”
Dream would ask why Wilbur would choose him as the one to go after this man, 404, but he could probably answer that himself; he was probably the only one who would find this fun. He likes having an unnecessary amount of rules, needing to slip between bars to reach the finish line. Dream flourishes where others flounder in frustration, because he was a genius like that.
Just by the description, this would be undoubtedly difficult to do - having to trap a criminal by letting them go, until eventually, they wore down. Recruitment alone was difficult, not to mention when it was a criminal they were recruiting. It was possibly because of the fear of being arrested or caught into a trap that had them shy away from joining their superhero league; oftentimes, they were too scared to ever give in, and it was a difficult job, in how they needed to be eroded into joining. That’s mostly why recruitment was a sparse job for many, given to those most patient - and Dream was patient, when it was something worth waiting for.
But to ask if this was something worth waiting for was something Wilbur would not be able to answer for Dream.
He meets Wilbur’s gaze when he answers cheerily, “No questions.”
It’s 2:06 a.m., and Dream is regretting not having brought along a snack, coffee, something.
He mournfully thinks back to the fettuccini Alfredo Sapnap had made for dinner, how it’s sitting in the fridge, just waiting for Dream to return. God, he really should have eaten it when he had the chance - he had assumed that 404 would probably take a few minutes to break in and leave with the vase, but he hadn’t considered at what time.
So here Dream was, sitting across a seventeen-million dollar vase, fettuccini-less and hungry, when the clock slowly ticks to 2:07 a.m.
The Meadow Museum is rather a prestigious place, as far as art galleries go. It held many notable art pieces, but Dream has never had the time to properly take a look around. He’d been here, once, back in seventh grade for a history field trip, but he’d spent most of that time in the Egyptian section, staring at mummies and jars meant to hold organs.
Maybe now would be the chance to wander these darkened halls, and Dream does have half a mind to do so, almost debating getting up from where he’d been sitting, concentrated on not losing focus on the vase, as if it would vanish right before his eyes. He knows not to move from his spot, however. It wouldn't be smart, especially when 404 could walk in any second.
Still, he does want to stretch, and he is in the motion of almost convincing himself to get up when there’s a noise.
A noise that he would not have heard if he wasn’t properly trained to look for it - the scuff of a boot, just barely noticeable, and nearly covered up by his own breathing. It’d come from the hallway, and is quickly approaching where Dream stood.
Half of him wanted to hide, perhaps surprise them into recruitment, which was stupid, obviously, so Dream immediately ditches that idea. He could stand his ground - 404, of course, needs to retrieve the vase, and if he was being paid seventeen million dollars or more, any reasonable person would most definitely raise up a fight for the vase, which was quite problematic in the fact that Dream wasn't supposed to fight him.
Dream has a millisecond to prepare himself when a figure walks in.
Even in the dark room, with no proper light to offer any salvation from the bleary blindness that captures his sight, Dream can still make out a faint figure of someone just a few feet away at the entrance of the room. With their figure, a few inches shorter than himself and slight in their narrow build, it would not take much to figure out that it was 404, no matter if the most visual example Dream has was a blurry figure in the dark.
404, who was, strangely enough, wearing obscure, white glasses, big enough to hide more than half his face behind shaded lenses. All Dream could properly make out of his face was a sharp jawline and neat, dark hair atop his head when he walked in, fiddling with the bag on his shoulder.
Okay, charming salesman, Dream reminds himself, charming salesman. You got this.
"Good evening," he blurts, because apparently charming salesman was some guy from the 1800s. He’s awkwardly loud, wincing when his voice cracks. He watches the man freeze for a second, having just stepped into the room and his head looks up from his bag and onto Dream. Even in the dark, Dream can feel his eyes on him through the dark lenses.
"What the hell," 404 says, and Dream nearly does a double take at the accent. He hadn't been expecting a British accent of all things to come out of this man's mouth. Not more than a few milliseconds pass for 404 to get over the initial shock of having an intruder, however, when he deflates and tilts his head to the side. "Oh. It’s you.”
The statement sounds mundane, as if Dream was some small disturbance, in how 404 sounds not all that surprised or enthused, and some part of Dream is a little bit offended. “That mask is quite creepy in the dark, you know."
"Oh, yeah, I get that all the time," Dream nods, remembering the white mask he has on. "It’s really good for catching people off-guard, though."
"I suppose it is," 404 agrees easily, before pausing. "Am I going to have to fight you for the vase?"
Charming salesman. You're not allowed to hurt him. "I'd fight you," Dream begins, and finds his own mouth out of his control when he is unable to stop himself from saying, "but they said not to touch the artwork."
That is not what Wilbur meant by charming, the voice inside his head groans, and Dream wants to smack himself when he watches 404 falter, mouth slightly agape as he stares back at Dream. His shock is much more amusing than he had expected, his whole body seemingly freezing.
"I - what?"
"What?"
404 shakes his head. "You - was that a pick up line?" He asks, taken back, and Dream almost laughs. "I'm about to steal a seventeen million dollar artifact, and your first instinct is to flirt with me?"
"I mean, I don't know, why not," Dream smiles, despite being able to list many reasons as to why not. "The accent is pretty attractive."
"I am literally a criminal."
Dream grins. "And what?"
"What is going on," 404 mumbles, running a hand through his hair. If he didn't have the glasses on, Dream would assume his eyes would be jumping from the vase to Dream, with how he seems to be considering his options. “I was prepared for fighting not - not whatever tactic this is.” He gestures to the general proximity of Dream with a hand.
“We can fight if you really want to,” he offers, getting into position.
“No, no, I’d rather not!” 404 quickly shakes his head. “I’ll just be taking the vase and heading on my own way.” He steps closer to the vase, barely an arm’s length away when Dream does the same.
“I mean, we might have to fight if you take this, though.” He swipes the vase off the stand it sat on, nearly dropping it when it found to be much heavier than he had anticipated. “You’re cute and all, but I can’t just let cute boys get away with crime like that.”
“Cute boys?” 404 sputters. “You don’t even know what I look like -”
“Sometimes you just know,” Dream tries not to laugh when 404 seems to be at a loss of words. “But, you know, it’s seventeen million dollars, you understand,” Dream nods, holding the vase protectively with both hands. 404 frowns, and steps closer.
“It’s also my rent, so consider that,” he counters, and reaches out. “Besides, what’s this vase going to do here besides collect dust while pretentious people ogle at it all day? The vase would be in much better hands with my client.”
Dream raises his eyebrows. “Your client, huh? What’re they going to do with it?”
404 shrugs. “I don’t know. Put flowers in it, probably. Hand it over.” He makes grabby hands to the vase, and Dream jumps away.
“No can do,” Dream sighs, holding the vase away from his body and away from 404.
He steps closer, and now Dream can faintly make out the color of his shirt - dark blue sweater, white collared shirt tucked underneath, 404 is dressed like a casual college student, not a prioritized art thief. With the goggles, the accent, and the fit, Dream was continuously becoming a little more surprised with each new finding. “I thought you guys didn’t care about stuff like this.”
“We don’t, but we do care about you,” he smirks, and watches the only part of 404’s exposed face, being his mouth, react as he pauses. It falls open for a second, before he quickly shuts it, frown lines growing evident.
404 retracts his hand. “Excuse me?”
“I mean, you damaged almost thirty million dollars worth in paintings a few weeks ago, stole much more without being caught, and the only evidence of you existing is a blurry photo from a security camera three years ago, which is impressive to some of us,” Dream explains, and 404 seems to be properly listening, having stepped away from the vase and from him.
“‘Some of us’? Not impressive to you?” 404 crosses his arms.
Dream grins. “Stealing always seemed to be a beginner’s level thing to me, really.”
“Steal a van Gogh painting and then come back to me,” 404 challenges.
He pretends to think about it, before shaking his head. “Nah, I’ve got to pass. Got to hold up my title as one of the good guys, you know? Which, might I add, is much better than being one of the bad guys,” he adds smoothly, because he was just that Smooth. Seriously, he’s doing a pretty great job of selling this to 404, he’s got to be. He’s absolutely drowning in Dream’s charm, surely.
“Which I suppose I am.” 404’s fingers lightly tap against his own arm as he stares at Dream. It’s slightly intimidating, being stared down while not being able to see his eyes. That’s probably how most people feel when they meet Dream. “Is this you trying to recruit me?”
“Is it working?” He asks hopefully, and 404 snorts. His watch goes off, and Dream watches him turn it off, not sparing it a thought.
“Absolutely not. You’re real shit at this, definitely worse than the other guy.”
Dream mentally files away to ask Wilbur about the other guy, and groans. Goddamn it. “I thought I was doing pretty good. You seem interested enough.”
404 hums, before a small smirk lifts his lips. He leans closer, tilting his head when he says in the most gravelly voice, “In you, maybe.”
Dream startles, not having expected that at all. “I - you - what?” He stutters, blinking rapidly. “What?”
As fast as it had happened, he leans away, seemingly satisfied as a prideful smile stays on his lips. “Just kidding. Thanks for the vase.”
“What?” Dream repeats for possibly the nine-hundredth time, before looking down at his hands, which were, shockingly, empty of a seventeen-million dollar vase. “What the fuck,” he says, loud in the suddenly empty room when he looks up, where 404 was absent.
The hallway was, disappointingly, dark and empty of any art thieves when Dream runs out of the room, head turning as he looks for 404, who has supposedly vanished into thin air, as far as he was concerned. There was no trace of him, not even a sound when Dream quickly rushed through the art gallery.
One would suppose an open window to clue him in, or the sound of shoes against the marble floor, but there is nothing at all as Dream hurries to find 404, because that was ridiculous. What kind of shitty romance movie move even was that, he can’t even -
When Dream confirms that, yes, a seventeen-million dollar vase just left his possession because he had thoroughly panicked, he takes a long moment to sit down on the floor across a Greek statue of a beheaded lady, and reconsider his job.
“What the fuck,” Dream emphasizes, and almost, just a little, dies inside.