Work Text:
“Elliot?” Leo lifted his head from where he was sitting, staring at the empty bed. The quiet strains of a melody filtered in through the window—Lacie, a name he shouldn’t know and yet knew too well.
The piano stopped playing and Leo moved without thinking. He still remembered the exact path Elliot liked to take to the school’s practice rooms. Down the first year’s halls, past the windows open to the courtyard.
There was a corner where the cats liked to play and where Elliot would stop, if only for a second. He’d reach down and give a brief pet, a small smile before withdrawing and moving on.
The Nightrays were dog people. It was something Elliot had drilled into Leo’s head for years whenever Leo caught him playing with them.
A door opened nearby, the door to a practice room, and a young woman walked out.
Leo stilled. Of course it wasn’t Elliot. The sheets in her hand read Ave Maria and he was hearing things again.
(Seeing things again, but those things were real in ways that this ghost was not)
He could still hear Elliot’s laugh when he finished a piece, the exact rhythm of his breaths when he performed.
He could still hear it and he wasn’t sure what he’d do when it stopped.