I'm Not Tired (Please Let Me Sleep)

Chapter one

There was something about the quiet night that Tommy didn't quite like. Call him paranoid but it just felt wrong. As if something or someone was out to get him. Yes, him specifically. The unimportant scrawny sixteen-year-old teenager who seemed to hardly care about anything but himself. Technically, he was a nobody. Just some random kid with nothing in his pockets apart from a phone with a crooked screen and a pack of mints. The peak mugging or kidnapping victim, his well-worn red hoodie practically screaming wealth and promising a high ransom for anyone who was to snatch him.

Okay, perhaps he was paranoid.

But nobody could fault him for that. It's only been a few years since he got out of that godforsaken house where his so-called brother had lived and taken care of him. If you could even call it that. Dream was a dickhead and unfortunately, the only person to ever look at him for more than just a second in the orphanage. Why? Honestly, he had no idea. The man never told him either, at least not directly. Said he wanted to make Tommy better, which should've immediately raised his awareness or, at least, a couple of red flags because who the fuck talks about people like that?

But, well, he was too young to have a say in the adoption. Or maybe that bastard had paid people to get the adoption through without his approval. It happens, he guessed, whatever. Just left him with a couple of scars, maybe a reasonable amount of fear when it came to darkness and nightmares, and a pretty good knowledge of self-defence.

Unimportant in his current situation, though.

He stopped briefly and tried to subtly look behind him, feeling as if eyes were boring into his back like daggers. The pavement behind him was empty, street light illuminating everything which he was thankful for as it gave his fear-struck mind less room to make up shadow figures or God knows what. It also meant that there truly was nothing out to get him and he assured himself of that by stopping and slowly spinning in a circle to check his surroundings.

Maybe some super-powered bitch was nearby. His mind always sensed that and put him on edge. He didn't like them, not one bit. They're dickheads, all of them and he didn't bother to keep up with the news on them, outright avoiding them if possible. Yes, this opinion on super-powered individuals may or may not be influenced by the time he had to spend with Dream.

As his eyes scanned over the rooftops he couldn't spot anything and, because of the fact that he was literally the only person on the streets, he promptly ignored the feeling of being watched and continued walking down the streets.

.

You know, maybe he shouldn't have ignored the eyes. Maybe then he wouldn't have woken up tied to a chair in a very obviously abandoned warehouse with a killer headache.

Honestly, he doesn't even know what happened. One second he was happily (more tiredly) skipping down the street, thinking about what he'd make himself for dinner (or rather midnight snack given the time he got off work) and the next second some random bloke jumped in front of him and then everything went black.

From the headache, he assumed that fella knocked him out. Using brute force, most likely. Which was just fantastic, he had a feeling his boss wouldn't like him showing up to work late because of this. Or, god forbid, he called in sick. A shudder ran down his back, he had called in sick to his janitor job at the local museum once and his boss, Jared or whatever the fuck his name was, had almost ripped him a new one.

So safe to say he'd like to avoid that if possible. Tommy squinted his eyes to look around a little, not bothering to even try and get out of the restraints. The people kidnapping him seemed to be professionals, those were steel restraints, not just flimsy ropes. Dream really could've learned something from them.