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Tommy has been stalking the night for well over three hundred years, if you asked, he might even say that it has been four hundred years if he rounds it up a little bit.
But even with his age, his brothers remind him constantly that he is their “little baby'' and they continue to coddle him even when he is far from being a fledgling.
He attempts to show them up at every opportunity, and he has found that are particularly delighted with the way that he can catch his prey and seemingly tear them apart from the inside.
Of course, a feat like that hadn’t come without some sort of drawback. As his skills grow, he loses the morality he had tried so hard to keep a grip on in his younger years.
But he no longer looks like the bratty 17 year old that Wilbur had met in the slums all those years ago, so he wasn’t all that concerned. It’s not like he had any reason to hold on to it anymore anyways.
He was grown up, matured in that no one else could really understand, maybe except the rest of his coven. Though he didn’t necessarily agree with their methods, he had come to understand them as time had slowly stripped him of his youth.
The memory of Tubbo and Ranboo doesn’t surface in his mind, even as he does activities that they would all once do together.
He sits alone at breakfast and lunch, only joining the vampires for dinner as a tradition that he had started for himself centuries ago. He barely recognizes the meaning behind it anymore but he can’t seem to bring himself to break it.
Though now the loneliness that he felt in the past no longer bears its weight on him as much as it did in his youth, He is surrounded by new people, new places and a family that is ever present in his life. Although he might have hated them 100 years ago he has since come to understand their relative distaste for humanity, because in a sense they do really get what they deserve.
The humans are selfish and immoral beings that succumb to their own vices, while begging for someone to save them from their self-imposed fate.
He doesn't wish to have the mortality that he knew he once craved because he has found new ways to chase thrills.
He jumps from person to person and boils them from the inside as Phil had taught him a few decades ago.
He’ll watch them from the shadows because his old habits die hard even if he hasn’t needed to steal since he was 17. He looks for the most susceptible and he'll snatch their wallet or their watch and stand close by as they panic.
He’ll laugh to himself a little when their eyes finally lock onto him as he holds the item up so that they can see it. Then they'll chase him and he'll have his fun, it's nostalgic to him. Even if he can only barely remember why.
The coven had been in the same town for well over seven decades, having finally found a decent place to set up base as the other members traveled about. Tommy knew they would always return and he knew that he could leave as well but something kept him seemingly stuck in one spot.
He wasn't sure why as the town was nothing special, in fact it probably wouldn't even be found on maps within the next hundred years. It was a city filled with dark alleyways and dingy streets where you were just asking to be robbed or mugged or worse if you happened to run into Tommy.
Though Tommy found the last part to be a little comedic because he had somehow managed to become somewhat of a local cryptid for how long he has loitered in the area.
At least that's what he overheard.
People still believed in vampires but they were far and few between.
The Sleepy Coven’s name was still mentioned though it was in bedtime stories to keep children from misbehaving, instead of newspaper articles that used to have the masses shaking.
Though vampires don’t strike fear in the same way they once did, it didn't stop them from wreaking havoc on a town every once in a while. Tommy enjoyed hearing the news even if he wasn’t participating in the carnage as he once did.
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It was a warm summer afternoon and Tommy was growing more and more bored as the minutes passed.
He was watching people pass from high on a building when a shrill sort of voice caught his attention. His eyes look around the people walking about the square as he tries to place the voice.
There had to be about a hundred or so people but his heightened senses tended to help him in times like this as he very easily found the source of the voice.
It was a rather short boy, maybe around the age of 16 or 17, he was wearing a yellow sweater that was reminiscent of the clothing that Wilbur used to make him wear.
The boy had some mix between curly and wavy hair that sat on his head in a brown sort of mess. It made Tommy laugh a but at how dumb it looked from the height he was at.
As the boy continued to talk he realized that shrill sound from earlier had been the boy's laugh, as another one erupted from his small frame and for the first time in a long time, Tommy found himself laughing along.
Although he couldn't make out exactly what had been said, he just had a feeling that it was something that would have made him laugh as well. It was a weird feeling to have but one Tommy appreciated on a boring afternoon like this.
The person who made the joke seemed to be another boy who was on the taller side. In fact, the boy was very, very tall. The tall boy could probably even tower over Wilbur who was known for his oppressive height.
The two really had captured his attention and Tommy couldn't help but follow them as they made their way through the square and in the marketplace that was next door.
It was a tiny marketplace that had no more than a few shops that weren't selling anything of particular use but the young boys seemed interested in every little odd and end that their eyes landed on.
Picking up little items seemingly at random before placing them back down again and starting up at another table. Although all they were grabbing were meaningless trinkets, their eyes seemed to fill with wonder every time a new object was found.
The two boys were compelling in the best way possible and he most definitely hadn't been this interested in something in a very long time. He might even go as far as to say; since he became a vampire.
The human boys held a sense of nativity and childishness, that Tommy wished he could replicate and as he watched them he felt something inside of him flourish a little bit.
It was a feeling that he hadn't felt in a longtime, he had been long enough that he wasn't quite sure it was at all. All he knew is that he needed to see where the boys went next.
Usually he would have called himself a creep because following around prey like this because it’s usually something Wilbur does and Tommy is nowhere near his level of creepiness. Yet, this time Tommy felt no remorse watching them from afar, but what was most noticeable was the fact that he felt no desire to feed on them either.
Usually when he felt this enraptured by prey, he could barely control himself, especially if he was this close to them. But as they sat themselves down in a field a little ways away from the main area of the town, he just wanted to keep watching.
As they sat down, the smaller of the two boys picked up a few flowers from the grass beside him and started folding them into what Tommy assumed was going to be a crown.
The plants that the yellow sweatered boy choses were large purple flowers, that Tommy was pretty sure were called Alliums. He’s not sure where the knowledge came from but he’s pretty confident that he’s right.
The blossoms were rather big to make a crown out of however, though he managed with practiced ease. Seconds later he was setting a beautiful crown atop the taller boy's head.
Straining a bit from where he was sitting to fully reach his hair, something which the boy laughed at.
It was then that Tommy noticed the peculiar styled hair the tall boy had. It was clearly artificially dyed white at some point but now had the roots growing in which created a beautiful cascading effect between the two colors.
There was something familiar with the black and white coloring that had Tommy scratching his head but he figured that the best way to find out would be to continue watching.
The smaller boy then began to recount different facts about the planets around them as if he had studied planets all his life. There was a single doubt in the young boy's mind that what he was saying was anything other than true.
Tommy was impressed because even over his long life span he could never have dreamed to have known more than which ones to eat and not eat. And even then, that knowledge had been shared with him and was never something that he sought-after himself.
The tall boy would chime in every once in a while with a joke that somehow seemed to mesh perfectly with Tommy's sense of humor. It was incredible. He couldn't understand how some random human boy was able to capture his obscure type of humor out loud to another person. Even Phil and Wilbur would tire of his incessant and usually inappropriate jokes within a few minutes.
He found himself giggling again from where he sat in a tree only a few feet away from where they were sitting.Though he made sure to keep quiet, as to not scare them through some sort of disembodied laughing.
But it didn't seem to reach their ears anyway.
They continued with their facts and inside jokes and as Tommy listened, he felt a little human. It had been a long time since he had even an inkling of humanity left within him but these two human teenagers somehow managed to bring out what little specs that were left inside.
Tommy found himself climbing out of the tree carefully and sitting underneath its shade, still a few feet away from them.
He planned to let it stay that way and the smaller one made a particularly funny comment and Tommy couldn't help himself from laughing out loud. The two boys quickly looked around to find Tommy sitting behind them.
He had his contact lenses, so in all regards looked quite human and luckily the boys didn't seem to realize that anything was amiss. In a moment like this, Tommy thought that he might feel a little on edge but even as he was approached by the two boys, he couldn’t help but feel a calm rush over him. It almost reminded him of the instinctual warmth that flowed through him every time his whole coven was together.
"Oh, hello there!"
The shorter one said.
"We didn't see you there,"
The tall one joked, bringing his hand to the back of his neck in embarrassment.
"Hopefully we weren't bothering you."
They were still sitting down but as the conversation wore on they stood up so that they were eye to eye with Tommy. Well as close as they could be when one of them was a couple of inches taller than him and the other was a couple shorter.
“Oh it was nothing honestly, what you said was just a little funny, don’t mind me though, I can just go back to where I was sitting.”
Tommy responded, a little bashfully, as not to make them uncomfortable.
“No, no come sit down with us!”
Usually, Tommy would have declined such an offer, especially if it came from humans but there was something about the two boys that really managed to draw Tommy in. It was almost as if they had their own sort of thrall, like Wilbur’s except, well, more human.
Where Wilbur’s was comforting in all the wrong ways, theirs seemed to be the opposite. They created an aura. It wasn’t threatening, it wasn’t overpowering, it was pleasant and kind and welcoming, making Tommy’s insides heat up as he could only imagine what his blood control would feel like.
The two sat down and he quickly sat down beside the shorter of the two and they continued with their conversation.
They taught Tommy how to make flower crowns and told him little stories about their lives and although Tommy didn’t share much about his, they didn’t press it.
He hadn't felt like he belonged in any group, whether it be his coven or the rest of society. But they seemed to complete Tommy and as the afternoon continued, he began opening up about his life a little too. About his travels and the people he had met, about the cities and all their ups and downs and ending streets. He did leave out the fact that he was well over ten times their age but they seemed to find the stories entertaining nonetheless.
They had never left the walls of the town. Not for any real reason in particular except for the feeling that they were waiting for someone. Tommy found comfort in the shorter boy's statement because he too had always felt like he needed to stay within the town, and even as his family moved on, he found that he never could.
He mentioned this and they laughed along with Tommy, and the taller boy joked that maybe they were waiting to meet each other. They always thought that their group of two could use another person.
They continued talking. When Tommy brought up how fucking weird his family is sometimes and how much they sucked compared to him, he thought the the two would start up with some of their own complaints about their siblings or parents but instead he was met with;
“We’re orphans.”
And Tommy stopped laughing for a second.
“Sorry, that wasn’t supposed to be like awkward or anything, I just thought that it might be important to mention at this point.”
“Oh yeah, for sure, sorry that did catch me off guard a little. Fair enough though, I was an orphan once too so I can kinda understand.”
“Surely not, what are the odds!”
“Yeah, I mean that was a long time ago now but once upon a time, it was me against the world. I’m a big man though so it didn’t really bother me.”
“That’s so cool, well not cool really but were you really all alone? That must’ve sucked.”
“Yeah, I mean at least we have each other so we don’t have to worry about too much.”
“But if you were all by yourself, that means that you had no one who would watch your back or anything, or take care of you when you were sick.”
“This one is so frail too, not sure what he would do without me.”
The shorter boy said while pointing at the taller one in the flower crown.
“Oh! Excuse me, Mr. Let’s steal from that obviously well guarded store with no plans of escape. I was picking glass shards out of your forearms for weeks after you decided to jump through their display window. My gosh!”
He looked exasperated but there was fondness in his eyes, making it impossible for Tommy to not smile at the story. It honestly sounded like something that he would have attempted at some point. Probably only stopped by Technoblade who didn’t really feel like doing any damage control that particular evening.
There was honestly something so familiar about the two boys but Tommy couldn’t seem to put his finger on what it was. They were nothing like his coven, so it couldn’t be anything like that. Sure, he had met his fair share of people over the years but none of them really stuck in his mind. They were almost always some sort of late night snack anyways, so there wasn’t really any reason to remember them anyways.
He had definitely chatted up a whole bunch of people in pubs, or bars as soon as he looked old enough to be in one.
Something that he is still insanely proud of.
Though he barely looked over 18, it was enough to fool most of the people that frequiented them.
It was also the perfect place to find his next meal.
Most of them were too inebriated to understand what was happening until it was far too late. But that's beside the point.
What was it that made these two human children so goddamn important that his brain decided that he should sit down with them and have a chat instead of filling him with the usual animalistic need for blood.
They were average-looking in most respects. Not that they were ugly by any means, it was just that he had never been drawn to people, to begin with. Maybe an asshole who looked like they deserved it but that was an entirely different thing and these two clearly weren’t assholes.
Sure, their humor was good. There weren’t many people who could put up with it so he was happy to see that they had found each other.
But it seemed like his brain remembered them, like he had unlocked some secret memory that he couldn’t seem to remember in a way that would physically manifest in his head.
Some people might think that immortality comes with a perfect memory but it was really quite far from the truth. Tommy had difficulty with remembering what sort of trends were from yesterday or last century and fashion was his worst nightmare. Thank the gods for Wilbur, who would go on a shopping spree every few years to help update Tommy’s wardrobe. Techno and Phil on the other hand seemed to be stuck in whatever period their clothes were originally from, but no one who saw them made it out alive all that often anyway so it didn’t really matter.
He was getting off track again.
Maybe he had run into their ancestors a couple of decades ago and they just looked really similar. But that’s no reason for him to have been drawn in as much as he is.
He was hopeless with faces, to begin with, but with just one smile they were able to pull down the walls that Tommy had built up around him, so much so that for a moment he forgot that he was no longer human.
Sitting in a flower field in a nowhere town with two people that seemed to complete Tommy in all the right ways, he felt at home. He felt nostalgic for a place that he was pretty sure never existed. He lost himself in the moment, in the conversation, and the smell of the flowers on the wind.
“Sorry, I don’t think we ever introduced ourselves.”
It was well into the evening at this point so Tommy couldn’t stop himself from laughing at the idea that he had spent an entire afternoon with two people and he didn’t even know their names.
“That’s my bad honestly, it’s impolite of me to have not asked in the first place.”
Tommy shifted a bit in the grass trying to get comfortable as the setting sun began to shine in his eyes.
“Well, my name is Tubbo and this is Ranboo.”
The tears were falling before Tommy could even really register what they had said.