---- From chapter 13, Text Me Back ----

W: So
W: You play piano in your sleep
W: Good to know

----

Wally didn't believe in ghosts. He didn't. It wasn't his fault that that belief was a little less firm during witching hour in Wayne Manor. Ghosts real or not, the place was haunted.

It's fine, he quoted to himself, this is fine. I'm okay with the events that are unfolding currently.

He closed his eyes tightly, still unable to bring himself to actually sit up and prove to himself that there was a perfectly, logical, sane reason behind this. He couldn't feel Dick next to him anymore, and that was fine; he'd probably been unable to sleep and had gotten up to do some work. It's not like he had been kidnapped by ghosts.

Wally was a logical person to a fault, sure he did some stupid things sometimes, like fall in love with his best friend, but there was always a method to his madness, even if it was a dumb one. He couldn't bring himself to believe in the supernatural, but he also couldn't deny it when faced with direct evidence.

And the soft, haunting melody of Liebesleid drifting through the manor at 3-something AM was pretty damning evidence at the moment.

Alright, alright, this is fine. Just think about it logically, he urged himself. His hands were clenching the bed sheets at his sides, and his stomach gave an uncomfortable roll.

The scientific method demanded he investigates. He really didn't want to, unsure how he'd react to his entire scientifically sound belief system crumbling to the ground around him, but whatever. What's the worst that could happen?

He was probably still half-asleep, despite his heart rate being through the roof, but he moved through Dick's room and into the hall with dimmed ease. He didn't even stall by getting dressed, running his fingers nervously through his sleep-tousled hair, shirtless and in his jeans from the day before.

It was almost like his curiosity had overtaken his logical reasoning skills, and he suddenly felt the urge to take back everything he's ever said about horror-movie characters.

Who- or what- the fuck plays piano at 3am?

The flashlight on his phone illuminates his path through the royally decorated hallways as he tries to ignore the tapping on the large windows, boney shadows on the outside. He knows it's just a tree, he knows that. Wayne Manor has always been a haunted building, both in reality and the media, Wally just usually felt in the know about the inhabitants that stalked the halls. Every news broadcast, YouTube video, and article he's ever sent to Dick with mocking hilarity is speeding through his mind now, trying to figure out what's Dick fucking with guests at a Galla and what could actually be a ghost. Or a demon. Oh God, what if its a demon? Do demons play piano?

The music gets louder the closer he gets, and he nearly jumps out of his skin when the door closed to him swings open slightly with the loud groan of disturbed wood.

He stumbles back, dropping his phone, which lands with the light pointing up, tripping over his feet and falling backwards through the door on the other side of the hallway. He scrambles back blindly, his heartbeat pulsing in his hands, his throat.

His back hits something solid, and he realizes with a cold wash of fresh terror that the music is so close, he's right next to it. His hands come around his back, hoping for a wall but feeling the engraved wood of the leg of a grand piano instead.

Ideas- thoughts- ran through his head like a casino slot machine, and he childishly insists that if he doesn't look, nothing will happen. Like when a looney-toon character runs off a cliff or when you avoid telling your best friend you're in love with him.

He manages to work his legs enough to stand up, his shoulders still hunched over horribly. The piano is still playing that beautifully horribly familiar song, and Wally starts inching his way toward the door.

He starts thinking about what he would see if he turned around. A ghastly, misshapen figure? Or nothing at all? Maybe a beautiful woman in a long, flowing gown?

In the doorway now, toeing the line between rooms, he betrays himself and turns around, eyes searching the room widely in an effort to see everything at once. He collapses against the doorway in relief- although, in his later tellings he would say it was more of a lazily, exasperated slouch- his knuckles white with how tight his hands had been curled into fists.

Dick is sitting at the piano, posture rigid and stiff, and his hands fly across the keys. He looks gorgeous, his body bathed in moonlight and his hair is fluffy and light, unbrushed. Wally would have appreciated it more if he wasn't busy recovering from what felt like a heart attack.

The adrenaline does fade away eventually though, and Wally realizes for the first time that Dick hasn't stopped playing once. No mocking remarks, no flirtations, nothing.

Wally drifts back in the room, having to use the doorway to support himself for as long as he's within arms reach of it, and realizes that Dick's eyes are closed.

Now that his heart rate has slowed to its normal super-human rate, Wally realizes just how exhausted he is. He has a bizarre feeling he won't remember this in the morning like he's blackout drunk off moonlight and the sight of Dick, or dreaming.

With the ease of an action done a thousand times, he picks his phone up from where he dropped it in his panic. The blue light makes his tired eyes sting as he disables the flashlight and drags the brightness as low as it will go.

W: So

W: You play piano in your sleep

W: Good to know

On the other side of the room, Dick's phone comes to life, buzzing softly against the frame of the piano where it sits. Wally joins Dick at the keys of the piano, sliding into the half-pushed out bench next to Dick. He sets his phone on top of Dick's so that the screens are facing each other.

Logically, he knows he should guide Dick back to bed, but Dick hasn't had the time to play in a while, and Wally doesn't want to be just another thing depriving him of it. Dick's hand's ghost across the keys, light and precise like the wings of a bird. It's too beautiful to stop.

There's a disregarded folder on the bench next to Dick, and the title on the front matches that on the top of the pages Dick has propped up on the sheet music holder. Wally can't remember exactly what Étude Op. 10, No. 5 is, but he knows it's not what Dick's playing now, not Liebesleid, and he wonders just how long Dick has been sitting here.

He fits the sheet music back into its folder, then puts the folder where the sheet music was so that it wouldn't get lost.  He slides into place next to Dick, close enough to limit Dick's reach to the far side of the piano. Wally can't tell if Dick just changed the major of the song, or if he was re-writing it as he went, but he didn't seem at all hindered.

Wally wonders, briefly, if there's anyone in the world who can play the way Dick does; his fingers pecking middle C briefly, like a kiss between new lovers, while he gently yet relentless tease the foot pedal, posing a question and writing a poem with a pinky on a key.

It's a gorgeous song, made more gorgeous by Dick's special way of weaving the notes together, and Wally feels his eyelids growing heavy. He doesn't close his eyes or shift into a better position to sleep in, but he's relaxed and comfortable anyway, watching as Dick's hands move across the keys, imaging those hands gliding across his skin. Making coffee. Writing that novel Dick's always wanted to write. Beating him at chess.

At some point, he drifts off, but he hears Dick's piano for a long time after.

----

Dick looked up from the oriental carpets where he was watching his footing when he felt Alfred's judgmental gaze. There was a moment where they did nothing but lock eyes, and Dick felt his face grow hotter and hotter the longer nothing was said.

Dick's neck was craned down, and looking up was starting to sting his eyes, so he had no choice but to drop his gaze. Wally's hands were thrown over his shoulders, hanging limply, and Dick's head was tucked under his chin, his whole body hunched forward so that he could drag Wally's unconscious body through the halls. His fingers were hooked around the belt loops of Wally's jeans, and he tried not the thing about how much contact there was between their bodies.

His sheet music folder is between his teeth, both of their phones tucked into the pockets of Wally's jeans, so he can't even defend himself or explain.

Alfred stepped to one side of the hallway, blocking the window and light of the barley rising sun, allowing Dick to shuffle past him. The tips of his ears were red, and Dick was quietly grateful that Alfred was too sophisticated to make any of the easy low-blow comments that he could have. If Roy saw them now, he might bite his tongue off trying to make them all at once.

Dick turns into his bedroom, well aware of Alfred still watching them in amusement from the other end of the hall, and manages to close his door without a slam.

If all goes well, Wally will never know. Maybe Dick'll even get lucky and he'll think the whole thing was a dream.

----

Wally's entire body remains stagnant when he wakes up, only his eyes snapping open. He's instantly wide awake, well-rested and comfortable. Too comfortable; definitely back in Dick's bed.

He sits upright, sliding out from the tangled mess of Dick's sheets, most of them kicked to the bottom, and finds his phone next to him on the bedside table, exactly where it would have been if he didn't get up in the middle of the night to go ghost hunting.

It doesn't respond when he clicks the power button. Deader than dead.

He rolls back into bed, stretching to reach the cord plugged in on Dick's side. He leaves his phone to charge and pulls himself up and out of bed again.

He's in the process of putting on his shirt and scanning Dick's shelf full of sheet music folders, his arms through the sleeves and the fabric bunched up around his elbows when Dick wonders in from the hallway.

He finds Étude Op. 10, No. 5 slotted in between Sonata No.14 and Prelude in C♯ minor just as Dick asks him what he's doing.

Instead of admitting he's looking for proof that their late-night piano session actually happened, he plucks Kreutzer from its place and says, "Don't you and Babs play this one?"

Dick crosses the room, rolling his neck and massaging his shoulder. He leans over Wally's shoulder, having to rise up onto his tip-toes, and every nerve in Wally's body goes sharp with affection.

"Yeah," Dick says once he's read the title and tripled Wally's heart rate, "she wants to play in the Tchaikovsky International Competition in a few years but," Dick shrugs, and that sums up his feelings on it. Wally has the bitter, sour thought, he'll do it for her, though, even if he doesn't want to, and wants to never think again.

Dick's still rubbing at his shoulders, so Wally slides Kreutzer back into place, pulls his shirt over his head, and gestures for Dick to spin around.

Dick's shoulders are stiff, and Wally rolls his eyes. No wonder his neck aches; leave it to Dick to overwork himself.

It takes a while, but eventually the knots in Dick's shoulders come lose under Wally's hands, and the tension slowly bleeds out of Dick.

When he's almost done, and Dick is relaxed and timid, he says, "Why the hell are your shoulders so stiff?"

"From lugging your heavy ass back to bed at stupid early o'clock!" Dick defends, and Wally feels him recoil as he realizes what he said.

Wally can't help but grin, admiring the pretty shade of red Dick's skin turns, and already burning the memory into his mind so he'll never forget it.

He can't resist teasing Dick a little more, so he says, "It did happen!" only to falter, realizing that Dick must've woken up and found Wally slumped against him at the keys of a piano, and soon he's blushing too.

In the end, they both agree; Roy can never know.