Chapter Text
There’s a rose in his hair.
He’s in George’s room, half leaning over George’s desk, and his hands are in George’s potted rose bush. His hair falls over his eyes, messy and overgrown, and from where George stands at the door he can just barely see a slight frown of concentration as the stranger picks a second flower.
George looks at the palm of his hand, to the name of his roommate written in blue ink, before asking, “Dream?”
“Holy shit!” Dream screams, dropping the rose back into the bush in favor of clutching his chest, eyes blown wide. “Don’t do that!” He exclaims, now turning to see George staring at him.
George, however, doesn’t meet his eyes; he’s too focused on the rose bush that’s rapidly catching fire, starting from the rose Dream had so carefully picked.
“Shit. Shit, shit, shit—” Dream now seems to have noticed it too, desperately looking around for a way to put it out.
George is stunned silent, mouth agape as he watches the white petaled flowers he had grown himself blind him with flames. He reaches for his water bottle near his bed, but before he can open it, someone takes it from his hands.
“Dream, you idiot!” A second guy says, uncapping the bottle and throwing all of its contents at the fire’s direction, successfully putting it out, but also drenching Dream in the process. “Are you seriously trying to burn down the building already? It’s move in day!”
“It was an accident,” Dream counters, a mock pout playing at his lips. “Besides, I had it under control, you didn’t need to put me out.”
The guy beside him scoffs. “Of course.”
George is looking from the rose bush to Dream, and his heart seems to want to claw up his throat. His flowers are ruined, blackened by soot and drooping from stems dried spikey. It doesn’t help that Dream’s shirt is clinging to the skin of his chest, and George can clearly see that Dream has the muscles to go along with his broad shoulders.
“And you are?”
George is suddenly aware of the other two staring at him, and he forces his answer out before his blood pressure rises any higher. He really hates meeting new people.
“George.”
“Sorry to scare you, George. I’m Sapnap, the R.A.” Sapnap offers him a smile, and George does his best to smile back. Sapnap has short, dark hair, and looks to be their age; unless he has the most serious case of baby face on the planet, he can’t be more than a sophomore. “Don’t worry, I’m the cool RA,” he adds, smiling more softly, and George distantly wonders just how lost must be the look on his face.
“Hope you know that sounds so pathetically lame,” Dream says, grinning.
“No, it doesn’t.”
Dream laughs, pulling his shirt over his shoulders and reaching for another in a box by his bed. George quickly looks away, searching for anything but Dream’s bare back. His eyes land on Sapnap and he’s grateful for the excuse to talk to him, even if the situation would usually make his insides turn with nerves.
“Nice to meet you and, uh— it’s cool, you didn’t scare me.”
“Wow, it really is not cool in here at all,” Sapnap groans, walking over to the desks to open the window. “It’s so hot I feel like I can’t breathe.”
“What can I say,” Dream smirks, “I tend to have that effect on people.”
That earns him a husk of a rose to the face from Sapnap, and George can’t help but wince at the ash stain that it leaves on Dream’s forehead.
“Where are you from?”
“London.”
“Is it green?”
George squints before answering. “I’m sorry?”
Dream just sits lazily with his back to the wall, dry shirt shirt now on. “Is it green there? I heard it rains a lot. I bet you never have to water your plants there.”
George stares at him, confused, but goes along. Somewhat. “I don’t know whether it’s green or not, I’m color blind.”
“Really?” Dream looks pleasantly surprised, almost intrigued. “That sucks—”
Sapnap shoves him sharply to the side, sitting beside him. “What’s your problem, dude? Don’t say that to the color blind guy!”
George can’t help but laugh. It sounds awkward and forced, like an alien’s crude first attempt at human interaction, but when he looks at Dream, he’s smiling.
George feels the blood rush to his cheeks, but stares back. “It’s okay, I honestly don’t care.”
Dream smiles wide enough that it creases the corners of his eyes, and George thinks that no amount of color blindness could take away from the bright spark that he finds there.
“See?” Dream shoves Sapnap back, “he’s nice, you’re the one making me look bad.”
“Fuck off, you’re the one that won’t shut up,” Sapnap rolls his eyes.
“I'm his roommate, dumbass, I have the right to get to know him.”
“You suck at it.”
These two are obviously good friends already, but George doesn’t mind existing around them. Not too much. He feels like he’s intruding, sure, but he also feels like a part of this, somehow.
“No, I don’t.” Dream says, crossing his arms. “Ten minutes in and I already know his name, where he’s from, that he’s colorblind and that he really likes flowers.”
George’s eyes travel to the white rose still in Dream’s hair, tucked behind his right ear and hid amidst a bunch of dirty blond hair.
And that’s when he comes back to himself. That’s when he notices that he’s been staring, he’s been drinking this Dream guy in, and it must’ve been the jetlag getting to him, because that’s not who he is. He looks away, because it feels so incredibly embarrassing.
He sinks down to his bare mattress, pointedly staring at the carpet where ash has smudged it black. When he speaks next, his words are cold, and void of any of the mirth they would’ve held moments back.
“You don’t know that.”
He can feel the other two staring at him. They stay silent for a second too long, before Sapnap says, “dude, you got like, a box full of them.”
“I like the flowers. They’re cute.”
George can hear the smile as Dream says it. He wants nothing but to slap it out of his mouth, but he can’t bring himself to do anything: not bite back, scream, or even leave. Something about the way Dream said it makes him think that maybe he shouldn’t be feeling as threatened as he is, and that makes him way too confused for his liking.
The other two seem to move on way quicker than him.
“I already knew half of that information, you still suck.”
“Sapnap, you’re the R.A.”
“I am.”
“Not fair!”
“Sucks to suck!”
“I don’t suck, watch— George, what’s your power?”
And now Dream is staring at him, smiling as if everything were okay.
“Dream, leave the guy be. He just got here.”
George feels overwhelmed. There’s alarms blaring in his head, a voice that he knows too well screaming at him to hide, to deny everything. He had honestly come here today thinking he could let himself go, he could let people see who he really is — but just a few hours in and these guys are already seeing too much, they’re onto him, and he hates it. He wants to run, curl up under the bed and stay there forever.
But he can’t— he won’t let himself be weak.
He looks Dream in the eye and well, maybe that’s strong enough for now. It occurs to him that he should probably fight, but instead he evades. “What’s your power?”
That’s alright, he tells himself, Dodging is not weak. As long as they don’t know, you should be okay.
Apparently Dream does not think his response was very okay, because he stares at George, dumbfounded. Sapnap doesn’t look much better.
“I manipulate fire,” Dream offers carefully, as if expecting George to call a bluff. “I thought I had made it clear with the whole…” he trails off, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the burnt twigs and fallen roses that now sit inside the pot on George’s desk.
George’s resolve falters when he realizes his mistake.
“Ah, I mean. You didn’t manipulate it very well.”
Dream sheepishly rubs the back of his neck, and great, now they’re both embarrassed. Sapnap doesn’t seem to notice, so he carries on the conversation.
“I don’t have a power.”
It takes George by surprise.
“You’re powerless?! Did you seriously just say that?”
Dream immediately rises to his feet. “Why? You got a problem?”
With Dream standing up like this, George notices for the first time just how tall he is. He’s looking down at George as if he could burn him with just his eyes, and it sends a chill down his spine to think that he probably could.
“Uh, no—”
As if on cue, the rose on Dream’s hair goes up in flames, and it’s all but black dust by the time it hits the carpet.
George stares at it in horror, recalling Sapnap’s words to Dream earlier.
Are you seriously trying to burn down the building already?
It seems like more than just a joke now.
“What’s wrong with not having a power?”
Dream seems to tower impossibly taller than before.
“Nothing— I didn’t—”
“Dream.” Sapnap warns.
Maybe it’s George who’s shrinking.
He rises to his feet too; he’s still shorter than Dream. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“What’s your power then, hm?”
“Dream, chill.” Sapnap intervenes, sitting on the edge of Dream’s bed as if ready to hold him back at any moment. “You’re gonna scare him away.”
That seems to catch Dream’s attention. He nearly snaps his neck to stare at Sapnap, and they look at each other as if that simple sentence had too many implications.
George feels so uncomfortable — this is a disaster. How is he supposed to be living with Dream if he can’t even manage one decent interaction with him? He sits back down, rubbing his eyes. He doesn’t know why or when this conversation took such a drastic turn south, but now he has no option but to try to salvage it.
“It doesn’t matter,” he tries, “I don’t have a power, so.”
The other two stare blankly at him. (At least they don’t look as murderous now.)
“You… don’t?” Dream muses and then, “you’re lying.”
He is. Dream lacks heat or finality to his statement, but he doesn’t miss the mark, that is, George is lying. He is lying and there’s currently a pit down his stomach, but he holds his ground and shakes his head no.
“Weird.”
He waits for them to call him out on his lie, but they don't. Instead, Dream seems to relax, sitting down again, this time at his desk, before shooting him a question. “Why’d you say it like that then?”
George ponders his next words, but he decides to go with the truth. “I guess I don’t ever see people openly admitting that. I was just surprised.”
Maybe things were different here, but back at home, being powerless was generally frowned upon. Almost as much as having certain powers, depending on which ones.
The point is, George had never heard anyone talk so readily about having no powers whatsoever until today, so he had no idea the subject could be this touchy — but by the looks of it, he’d managed to save his ass—
“Dream, I thought you said you’d ask specifically for a roommate with powers on the housing form.”
Or not. George all but stabs Sapnap to death with how sharply he stares. His R.A. doesn’t pay him any mind, looking to a pensieve Dream as he waits for an explanation.
“Huh. I did.”
They frown and nod at each other for a moment, and George wants to call them idiots, but he bites his tongue.
“Huh. Weird. Welp,” Sapnap stands up, seemingly over their little moment, “I gotta go now. Don’t explode, I haven’t had time to stock up on fire extinguishers yet. I’ll go to the store later. Oh, and if the ice-power freshman freezes the water fountain again, I’ll call you downstairs.” He’s already past the door when he remembers to yell, “bye George!”
George has half a breath left in him to shoot back a ‘bye’.
He falls to his side, and he feels miserable. All he wants is to black out, but he has yet to unpack his bedsheets and his mind is still lingering on Dream, and the fact that George does not want to be unconscious near him.
Dream is sitting in his chair, hunched over his desk, typing something on his phone. He looks… fine, more than fine really, but George still doesn’t know what’s his deal. How often does he… ‘explode’. To be fair, that part has to have been a joke, but still. George doesn’t know Dream. Dream doesn’t feel safe to him.
“Does color blindness count as a power?”
The serious tone makes George laugh. “It might.”
“A-ha!”