I'm Not Tired (Please Let Me Sleep)

Chapter eleven

Tommy had started to get nervous.

Six days.

It had been six days since his talk with Zephyrus and ever since then something was significantly wrong with him.

For one, there was the constant paranoia, of course. The potion would run out within the next twenty-four hours and he had already begun to notice the changes. They were subtle at first, his roots slowly turning the familiar gold-blonde colour and a light and almost not noticeable blue rim around his irises. He'd also noticed the baby fat (which he was low-key thankful for being gone due to the potion and Wilbur's appearance) returning to his cheek which made him look even younger than he already did.

It had already gotten him into an awkward situation at work, Tubbo taking one look at him and asking why he had made such a fuss about Wilbur dyeing a streak of his hair when he'd already dyed it before anyways. Tommy had been confused initially which made the bee hybrid frown and the boy had then sent him to the bathroom to look in the mirror. From there he had tried to play it off as best as possible, blaming his lack of sleep on the fact that he was rather slow today.

He wasn't quite sure if Tubbo believed it but it had to do for now.

For two, ever since the villain had draped his fucking wing over his shoulder his mind had gone mental.

And not in the way of it's going to kill everyone in the world and then himself kind of mental.

Rather, it had become outright fucking clingy.

Clingy in a way that it begged him to go somewhere specific and to stay at that specific place with...more specific people? There were words for them, they floated around his mind with new annoying voices he'd never noticed before whispering them whenever he got near his bedroom or close friends.

It confused him because he'd never experienced something like this before. It was as if a bunch of very clingy and very demanding little people had taken residence in his mind, whispering stupid shit and urging him to pick up shiny trinkets or hug his friends, which was a big no, because public display of affection? No.

They were seriously beginning to mess with his brain because he simply could not understand why he was suddenly drawn to stupid necklaces and earrings and whatever reflected the light in the slightest way. And he didn't understand why the voices urged him to take the objects home either, for fucks sake his entire living room was filled with them and it still felt wrong whenever he put another nice smooth shard of sea glass on the shelf.

Nothing made sense, they were yelling for people, for protection? For a fucking caretaker? It's like he had suddenly gotten the mind of a bloody baby. Or a really old person who needed assistance in the retirement home. That's what caretakers were, right?

The issue had begun to become just that, an issue, when the actual clingy side of himself got out. The weird fucking new voices that he had blamed entirely on Dream messing with his head (because where the fuck would they come from if not from a kind of mental illness that the bastard had given him through years of traumatic experiences and almost two weeks of torture in form of bloody, gory scenes straight) had started to demand the attention of certain people.

One of these people was Zephyrus. Which was a big fat no because Tommy was not about to leave his fucking flat with his natural hair colour slowly but surely peeking through again and his face already morphing back to how it looked like before the Syndicate got to him and supplied him with the potion.

He had refused to go out at all, called in sick for a week which apparently caused concern for a lot of people there. Mainly Tubbo and Ranboo (who he'd finally met and figured out their true name, how the fuck he had gone from a normal name like Mark to whatever Ranboo was, was still a mystery to Tommy).