A/N: Listening to the song while reading may or may not enhance your experience. I highly suggest it, as it's a good song. But I'm biased.
I do not own Young Justice or Sleeping Lessons by the Shins
2 AM
III.
Sleeping Lessons
Wally talks in his sleep.
Sometimes it's cute, and sometimes it's irritating, but most of the time it's soothing. He reminds Roy of those white noise CDs Dinah's forever telling him to listen to. Relieves the senses, she'd say before ruffling his hair like he's fourteen and grinning wickedly. Roy ignores her, because whales singing and birds crooning don't do anything for his peace of mind. He misses Dinah sometimes, but he's gotten used to loneliness since he turned nineteen. It's less lonely on nights like these, now that Wally's moved in and the apartment is filled with the quiet hum of kitchen appliances and Wally's murmurs from random little corners.
Because when Wally falls asleep, it's rarely ever in a bed.
::
Sometimes he's stressed, and Roy will stumble over him while he's asleep on the carpet, head pillowed on top of a textbook. The words come out as mathematical theorems or cell life cycles, muffled by his cheek mashed into the pages.
(mitosis, meiosis, the derivative of…)
Sometimes he sleepily memorizes Rilke in his sleep, or Akhmatova. Once, Roy was sitting next to him on the couch sorting through bills, when he heard "I gave m'self to him… 'nd took himself for… pay…" as Wally's head slowly dropped against his shoulder. He'd grinned. Dickinson, not bad.
Sometimes he wakes up, and looks at him sleepily from wherever he is (at the kitchen table, on the floor, next to his laptop) wondering how Roy's still awake. He'll throw his arms around Roy's waist in defeat then, and childishly refuse to let go until Roy got him into bed. And not in the fun way, either, Roy will huff as he throws a pillow to muffle Wally's snores.
Sometimes he'll toss and turn, and whimper no-no-no and Roy will know that something went wrong that day; a child didn't get saved in time, a train crashed that he couldn't stop, guns, bio-warfare, something, and he'll know to shake him back to consciousness.
Sometimes he'll say little nonsense words in his sleep, like he's dreaming nonsense dreams and Roy'll get treated to "Get the hell away ninjas" and "Don't eat the wild octopus".
Sometimes…
Sometimes Roy hears his name. And he'll look over to wherever Wally is lying, thinking he's awake. But his eyes will still be closed and he'll be smiling.
In the mornings he won't really remember what he said. In the mornings, Roy gets treated to an unholy chorus of beeps from his alarm clock and a muttered "shit I'm late" as a gust of air signals his dash into the bathroom. In the mornings, Wally is always in a proper bed, next to a proper bedmate. A bedmate that buries his head under the covers, because his job doesn't require him to get up before nine.
But that's alright. That's alright, because Roy has an unbelievable amount of blackmail material to hold over his head when he gets home. Not that it'll do much good though, because Wally? Sometimes Wally's awake.
Roy just doesn't realize it.
A/N: I'm in a pretty jazzy mood today.
I don't sleep talk, but my dad does. It's pretty funny, because he's the only parent I know who can actually lecture me in his sleep. Pretty lucidly, too, because he doesn't slur. So when I hear "Why did you let it burn!" at midnight, I automatically ignore it. Until he actually comes in, of course.
Short and vignette-y, but I hoped the taste lingered long enough to satisfy.
Love to hear from you.
vivevoce