I'm Not Tired (Please Let Me Sleep)

Chapter three

So as it turns out, he was not supposed to be immune to Siren's voice. In fact, he wasn't supposed to be immune to any of their abilities but here they were. Siren was pacing in front of him, muttering something intelligible that he didn't even try to understand. He was only just now noticing that this dude also had wings, though they were quite different from Zephyrus'. His wings resembled more those of a bat with a grey membrane instead of feathers lining the skin which connected the bones, nerves and blood vessels.

When they tested Siren's ability on him, Zephyrus kept looking at him weirdly before looking at the Blood God and shrugging. The dude then summoned some fucking shadow monsters (which looked like giant dogs) to try and intimidate him. It was quite the switch in attitude, and Tommy wasn't sure how he was supposed to handle that. Apparently, they weren't too big of a fan of some random kid running around and being immune to their abilities. That he got. Somewhat. It means he was a threat to them in some way. Not really since he was literally just some random teenager and definitely not a threat to any of them (especially not Blood God) but he got the idea.

The shadow monsters had been growling at him, and he wasn't sure whether it was the sleep deprivation or his desensitisation to threats and violence but he didn't fear them. No. Those were nothing but overgrown puppies. And he was not ashamed of the squeaking noise he let out before throwing himself at one of them and nuzzling in their weird, black fur. Blood God had been completely dumbfounded upon watching how his monsters stopped growling and instead pushed Tommy to the ground, yipping happily and surrounding him like literal puppies.

After that they had given up on intimidating him or whatever it was that they tried. Maybe they didn't even want to intimidate him and simply tested the extent of his apparent power immunity? Eh, who knows. Certainly not Tommy.

"You are perhaps the weirdest child we've ever met," Zephyrus said as he came back into the room, handing him another can.

"First off, I'm not a child. Second, that would imply you've met other children before, creep."

Tommy found great joy in the tired sigh from the winged villain, shooting him a toothy grin as he took the can out of his taloned hands.

Since it's been a few hours of their initial conversation (half of this time which was spent with Tommy cuddling the monsters while Siren seemed to have a small existential crisis and the Blood God looking more than just lost) and they still didn't know how to fix the sleeping situation, Zephyrus had sighed and promised more energy drinks.

This one was a brand too, unfortunately not the tropical flavour, though. Some kind of artificial berry. It tasted weird but it had enough sugar and caffeine in it to keep him awake so Tommy didn't complain.

Siren stopped pacing and looked at him. It must've been a peculiar sight, an incredibly sleep-deprived teenager now sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace with a blanket on his lap, surrounded by apparently very deadly shadow creatures who curled around him like overgrown puppies.

"Slap yourself."

"You can fuck right off with that," Tommy said without missing a beat, taking a sip from the new energy drink and shrugging off the tingling sensation.

"Why are you like this?"

"Trauma."

Siren visibly sputtered, then sighed and flopped himself face-first on the sofa. Zephyrus, who was now leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, sighed and exchanged a glance with Blood God.

Tommy wasn't quite sure what was going to happen now, how they'd continue with this entire situation. He had work tomorrow which he definitely could not miss, Jared would probably kill him and that would be very unfortunate and also counterproductive considering he had spent all these years with a total single-digit number of hours of sleep just so some random white man could take him out. Somehow, he doubted the villains would kill him. For all their villainous glory, they were weirdly concerned about him. Zephyrus and Siren were, at least. He didn't know about Blood God. That dude was an enigma and unreadable.