[Scar/Dream] Heart Thief

1. An Impulsive Confrontation

This was almost going too well.

With a soft grunt of effort, Dream hauled himself up onto the roof of the house. He wouldn't really call it a mansion, not like some of the pretentious homes he's encountered, but it was still a very nice two-story house, looking spacious from the outside, gated in and protected by plenty of security cameras.

Luckily for him, the cameras had a pretty glaring blind spot over on the side he had approached from. To be fair, the owner probably didn't expect someone to scale both the wrought iron fence and the privacy hedge.

But well, Dream was desperate, and he liked a challenge. And while the ground-floor windows had been locked, he had noticed a second-floor window that was slightly open, and there were just enough handholds on the wall for him to scale his way up onto the roof.

The shingles felt sturdy under his hands, and he was glad for his gloves. Cutting himself on one of these would be painful.

The slope of the roof was treacherous, but he was up here, so no backing down now.

He waited quietly for a few moments to make sure his climb hadn't been heard, but there didn't seem to be any movement inside the house. The room he was targeting was dark.

He briefly looked toward where the gate was, thinking he had heard it creak, but there was no further noise. Maybe he was imagining things.

He gave himself a shake and got back to business, carefully climbing over to the window. He crouched on the roof where it sloped down in front of the window, making sure he had decent footing before sliding his hands under the window and trying to nudge it up. He wasn't that surprised when it slid up easily. People so often neglected to lock upstairs windows like this, they didn't expect someone to get in this way.

He peered into the room, unable to see much. From the faint amount of moonlight streaming in, he could tell that it was a bedroom, but that was it. He stared for a while, waiting for his eyes to adjust, until finally he could make out more of the bed. It was a decent size but empty, the covers thrown messily back.

Dream briefly checked that his mask was still covering his mouth and nose, then slid into the room. Okay, this was good and bad. Good because he might be able to quickly swipe something and get out without having to explore the whole house. Bad because the owner could walk back in at any moment.

Dream kept the window open in case he had to make a quick escape. Then he snuck over toward the dresser, keeping his steps slow, glad for the plush carpet that muffled the sounds.

He looked around for anything like a jewelry box, but found nothing. Tugging open a couple of the drawers revealed only clothes. Some of it looked nicely made, but other pieces were as casual as something he would wear.

Maybe he should check the closet. He looked around, making sure he was still alone, then opened the closet door. He told himself to look quickly, and if nothing valuable turned up, to just leave. This was a very risky location, the owner could decide to go to bed at any moment!

He saw various suits and other formal wear inside the closet, some very nice shoes, and wondered if he could get a good price for the shoes. He could fit at least one pair of those into his backpack, couldn't he?

He knelt down to examine them, letting the backpack down from his shoulders and setting it on the floor.

Then a glint of metal caught his eye and he curiously picked up a metal baseball bat, then smiled, wondering if it was leftover from childhood, or if the owner still played. The owner didn't have a kid that he knew of, he had watched him from afar a few times before picking the house as a target, but he supposed he didn't know everything about the man's personal life.