Chapter Text
Dream, or Exdee, was a vigilante. Was, because if he has to fight this asshole again, he's quitting and leaving everyone to die. He's serious, he's so serious.
The asshole in question was attempting to hijack cars, or something like that, and then control them to crash into things so they can, sue a car company? Exdee wasn't paying attention to the monolog. They also have, like, three giant robots as well, and it's so insanely tedious to fight them. Did he already mention quitting? Yes? Well, you're hearing it again. Fuck this and fuck Dream's life choices for putting him here.
Why couldn't he be working on dismantling his least favorite criminal organization right now? That's way less painful.
Exdee's back slams into the concrete wall of the parking garage, and he gasps for breath. Luckily, this puts him in the perfect position for a headshot, so he does just that. It hits, and Exdee quickly moves again before the robot guy has time to react.
A camera lens catches in the light in his periphery, great, the press is here too.
The fight takes much longer than it should, especially because Exdee has to focus practically all of his attention on preventing property damage, an impossible task given the circumstances. Eventually, he comes out on top, shaking out his clenched fists and loosening the tension he carried throughout the fight.
His phone buzzes. Has it been doing that the whole fight?
A reporter he had been resolutely ignoring up until now tries to approach him. Fuckkkk. Dream checks his phone to try and avoid eye contact as long as possible, and yep, 54 messages came in during the half hour he was busy.
Everyone else was talking about planning a movie night, and Karl sent a few blurry selfies of himself making out with Quackity and Sapnap, so mostly nothing urgent. Except, according to George, Dream needs to go to the store and get a special brand of shampoo.
Dream sighs to himself. They did need a few things from the store, and he was going to head back soon anyway, so it looks like he has to schedule in a shopping trip before he can even think about his bed.
The reporter clears their throat.
Nope, not today. Goodbye. Exdee is leaving.
It was a long, terrible day, and all Exdee wants is to go home and shower. The press can go fuck themselves, Exdee isn't even technically a superhero, he doesn't need to play nice. He can leave after a fight without talking to like, every news station.
So he just turns on his heel, ditches the reporter, and begins the arduous task of leaping across the roofs of skyscrapers, the long way of course, who knew who was watching to figure out his identity.
It takes longer than he'd like to get back, because he keeps nearly tripping, or misjudging the distance between buildings. Basically just, not having a great time. Don't parkore across skyscrapers if you're sleep deprived, kids.
He gets to his apartment eventually, though. Almost entirely unscathed.
The window is another obstacle meant to torture him, because it got stuck. He was seriously tempted to just break the glass to get inside, but that would come with a whole host of problems that he'd have to deal with, and Dream does not want anymore problems.
So instead of just shattering the window and crawling inside, he struggles to lift the glass quietly enough that none of his neighbors would hear. If he was a normal person, and not fucked in the head, he wouldn't even be running around fighting crime and getting lost on rooftops. Instead, he'd be in his apartment, in bed.
Fuck, he wants to lie down in his bed. So. Bad. He just got a new mattress, with one of those cushy top layers. It's heaven. It's heaven on earth, and the window is the only thing stopping him from lying on it.
Why is the window doing this to him?
Finally, it squeaks open, and Exdee cringes a little at the noise, but still gratefully crawls inside and flops on his bed.
He rolls over, shoving his face into his pillow and preparing to scream a little. Because this is definitely a day worth screaming about, when the sound of his door opening stops him.
"What the fuck." He hears Sapnap exclaim.
Exdee shoves himself back out the window in record time. Spanap was supposed to be with his boyfriends right now, not peeking around in Dreams room. What the fuck indeed.
All he wanted was to be clean and warm in his beautiful, comfy, perfect new bed, and instead he has to run around for another half hour so he can grab one of his emergency changes of clothes and then fucking walk back to the apartment like a normal person.
Fuckkkkkk. He's gonna cry, this is agonizing. His bed... all he wants is his fucking bed, and he's still super sore from the fight yesterday, and the fight this morning, and the fight from ten minutes ago. Which, that's always annoying. If he comes back and sees that Sapnap ate his leftovers, Dream is actually gonna snap and kill someone.
He mindlessly leaps between buildings and scales walls. So mindlessly infact, that he nearly misses the roof where he hid his emergency stash of clothes. There's only one word to describe this whole experience: Miserable. Miserable! Miserable! Miserable!!!
He chokes down tears of frustration and gets dressed. The building he's on now (a public library) has a broken lock on the door for roof access, which is the reason Dream even chose this building to begin with. So it's easy enough to sneak down into the public areas and walk out the front door like a normal civilian.
A normal civilian who's once again on the brink of tears, because he just realized he left his phone on the roof.
Fuck!
He seriously considers just leaving it up there. He does need his phone, but not.... that badly. He could probably get away with leaving it completely unattended, on a roof, where it's going to face the elements. Fuck. It's set to rain tonight.
He circles back to the roof to grab it.
In the end, it takes him 2 hours to get back to the apartment. It's really really shouldn't have, but upon grabbing his phone Dream remembers the grocery list George sent him during the fight, and so he had to go to the store, and then at the store a kid was crying their eyes out because they got separated from their parents, so Dream had to take them to the front of the store and wait until the kids parents' showed up. Which ended up taking forever because they had apparently already left the building!
Dream gets himself a box of shitty doughnuts as a reward for surviving the shitty day.
Finally, he makes it to the outside of his apartment, and fumbles to get one of his hands free so he can open the door. He's been ignoring the fact that Sapnap had seen Exdee in his room, but now that he's back at the apartment, anxiety is starting to creep in.
What if Sapnap realizes that he's Exdee. What if he hates him for lying? What if he demands to join him as a vigilante, and then gets seriously injured or killed? What if, and this is very unlikely but Dream is already starting to spiral so really you can't expect him to make reasonable paranoid guesses about Sapnap's reaction, what if Sapnap is actually one of the rogues Dream fights as Exdee? What if Sapnap tries to kill him?
Throughly bolstered by these positive uplifting thoughts, Dream steps into the apartment, hoping that Sapnap is already asleep and Dream can avoid him a little longer.
Sapnap is sitting at the dimly lit table. Dream is genuinely starting to believe that he got cursed earlier in the day, because his luck has been shit all day. This is the icing of the cake. Or something like that, he's too tired to bother with metaphors.
"The craziest thing happened while you were gone," Sapnap says the moment Dream opens the door.
Once again, Dream starts longing for his bed. It's so close, it's so far. He'd better survive this conversation so he can actually sleep on it, instead of just daydreaming about it all day.
"Hi Sapnap. How are you Sapnap. I brought you those pastries you like, Sapnap." Dream says. He's casual. He has no idea what Sapnap is talking about. He's just living a normal civilian life.
"Wait, actually?" Sapnap laughs. "Dude, I could kiss you!"
Dream moves to the kitchen to unload the pastries and the other things he grabbed at the store.
The pastries are definitely a bribe. Dream loves his friends and would go out of his way to make them happy, but right now, these pastries are a bribe. Please don't turn out to be evil and try to kill him, he begs. And maybe more importantly, please don't bring up the vigilante in my room.
Sapnap makes his way over to where Dream's standing, and snags his treat. "You had a visitor." He says, wiggling his eyebrows.
"Oh?" Dream asks, trying very hard not to tense up at that. "Who was it?"
"Exdee."
Dream does tense at that, before forcing himself to relax. Anything he says or does for the rest of this conversation will be under Sapnap's heavy scrutiny, and Sapnap knows Dream very well. He can't let Sapnap know.
Not only would it be dangerous for Dream, because the more people who know, the more likely it is that his secret gets out, the more danger Dream will be in. His many enemies could attack him anywhere using the knowledge of his civilian identity. It's also very dangerous for Sapnap, for many of those same reasons. If word got out that Sapnap knew Exdee's true identity, his enemies would hurt him to try to get that information.
Blah blah blah. Ok, probably every Vigilante has this same crisis about sharing their identity. Dream's situation isn't unique.
That doesn't stop it from being stressful.
"Dude, I don't know why you're so tense. I'm not gonna get mad at you for sleeping with a Hero."
If Dream had a drink, he'd be spitting it out. Does Sapnap think he and Exdee are fucking?
"What." He manages to strangle out.
"I mean, he was basically sniffing your pillows when I saw him. If you guys weren't together I'd be really concerned." Sapnap laughs.
"I- we're not, he isn't," Dream stutters out, then he realizes just what Sapnap said. "Wait, sniffing my pillows? What the hell?"
"Wait, are you guys not together?" Sapnap suddenly looks very serious and very concerned. "Because I've seen him coming in and out of your window a few times."
Dream lets out a quiet "Fuck." Running his hands down his face.
There have been a few times in the past couple of months when he was less careful than usual, and that involved leaving the apartment as Exdee, instead of going to one of the multiple locations he's scouted out and periodically switches between in order to hide his identity.
It gets tiring after a while, the constant vigilance and paranoia that comes with hiding such a big part of yourself. He shouldn't have gotten sloppy, because look at the mess he's in now!
"Dream?"
Dream gives up on being a normal person and sinks to the ground, letting his head thump onto his knees with a defeated sigh.
"It's... complicated." He says, and his voice sounds quieter than he wanted. Maybe he's more exhausted than he thought. "I don't know if it's ok for me to talk about." He takes a shuddering breath, "It's not bad."
Ok, there. Blame it on the guy with a secret identity. It's not Dream's fault, it's his other vigilante identity. Then Dream, who's half asleep right now, doesn't have to deal with it. Exdee, does. And really, when is Sapnap going to have a chance to question Exdee about his alleged sexual relationships?
Sapnap sits with that for a little bit. Before hesitantly speaking. "Uh, ok. So it's more of a situationship?"
"Please just eat a pastry and shut up."
Sapnap eats a pastry.
Dream can feel himself starting to fall asleep, so he forces himself up to take a quick shower, so he can finally fulfill his ultimate wish of going to fucking bed. He barely remembers to say goodnight to anyone before he slumps into his room.
He's never really noticed before, but Exdee smells slightly different from Dream. Maybe it's the sweat, or the outfit he wears. Or maybe it's because Dream just came out of the shower and the bed is new, so every scent clings to it, but he hugs the pillow closer to himself anyway.
It's strangely comforting.