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“What is the point in making a machine that records your dreams if you never sleep, Tony?”
Tony rolled his eyes, and continued to make small adjustments to the device he’d been putting together for the last few months. “Hardy har har, thank you, Platypus. But this won’t just be for me once it’s finished. Once I’ve confirmed that it works at all – yes, using myself as the guinea pig – then I’ll be seeing about making it adjustable so it can work with anyone. Hopefully it’ll be useful for a lot of people, medically and psychologically.”
“Not to mention being incredibly exploitable as an entertainment venue,” Rhodey pointed out idly. “Can you imagine the number of people who would be lining up to buy the dream recordings from a celebrity? Or…” He trailed off thoughtfully. He frowned. “Tones, are you sure you want to make something like this? I just tried imagining what it would be like if someone nasty got a hold of it and tried using it to extract information.”
“Mmm. I thought about that, actually. Hanging out with Fury and his gremlins has made me paranoid. More paranoid,” he amended when Rhodey snorted.
He didn't used to be paranoid. Some days he could actually remember what it had been like to go through his days and not worry at all about his weapons falling in the wrong hands, when his biggest worries had been getting in fast enough for a ridiculous purchase, or in ironing out the details in a new invention. Things had changed significantly in the last few years. Now, even when he wasn't making anything with obvious weapon potential, he was considering all the ways it could be turned that way, just in case.
“I've got some fail-safes in place with this,” he said, turning to the computers to scan through the codes. “Basically it will be unusable without JARVIS behind the wheel. They can steal all the components and code they want. Without J, it won't go.”
Rhodey raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You sure about that?”
“We are sure, Colonel,” J's voice answered. “I have had ample time to take measure for their decryption systems. What is in place now will be, most optimistically, nearly impossible for them to solve.”
“It'll at least stymie anyone who nicks the tech long enough for us to catch up with them.” Tony smiled grimly. “And we don't like anyone playing with our toys, do we, JARVIS?”
“We certainly don’t, Sir.”
Rhodey had given him a look, but not asked any more questions about security. Instead he’d decided to start asking him questions which were more along the lines of what Tony thought he would find in his dreams. They were dreams, after all, and barely comprehensible even when one was actually asleep and had dream logic to work from. Once you were awake, any sort of logic which existed in the moment evaporated like mist, so why bother?
Tony waved him off for the most part, telling him he had no imagination, and obviously that was why he couldn’t see the usefulness of a dream recorder. His own dreams must have been like plain potatoes if he couldn’t see how awesome it would be to replay your dreams. Not all of them, obviously, but the very best ones? The ones you wished you could go back to over and over again…? There was definitely a use for that. A selfish one, but a use.
Rhodey had rolled his eyes at Tony and dropped the subject, at least for the time being.
Tony was grateful for that. He didn’t want to have to admit to why it was he had started building the machine in the first place.
The thing was, normally, he wouldn’t want to watch his dreams while he was awake. Most of the time it was bad enough to have experienced them the first time. Nightmares were still a frequent visitor of his, plaguing his nights with all of the memories and fears he had learned how to repress during the day, flinging all of his mistakes back in his face when he had no choice but to pay attention, and little recourse but to wait until it was over. In general, it wasn’t something which Tony would have ever thought he’d be going to so much trouble to remember – especially if he’d had the unbelievable luck to forget his nightmares so completely.
That was the driving force behind all of Rhodey’s questions. Tony could see the confusion and the concern there, just behind his eyes. Ever since Sam had joined the Avengers, Rhodey – who had already been pretty insistent that Tony get some of the help which soldiers usually got after a war – had only gotten more insistent that Tony find someone to talk to. Someone other than the rest of the Avengers, and Bruce in particular.
Tony always managed to shake him off, though. He was fine – or fine enough. He probably did need to see a shrink; he wasn’t going to debate that in the slightest. But even going to the kind who specialized in combat veterans, Tony would present some rather interesting challenges.
All of the Avengers would have, come to that, and not just because of what they’d gone through since becoming a team – though there was enough material there to provide an entire school full of psychiatrists with careers. But trying to unknot everything going on with Steve’s past, or figuring out Bucky – or the two of them together?? Bruce was a storm in a teacup, and he was probably the most balanced out of any of them – out of necessity. Tony didn’t even want to know what was lying in wait in the depths of Nat’s subconscious.
But it wasn’t the complexity of his issues which stopped Tony from seeking out a professional, or even any doubts that said professional would be able to effectively help him. He just really wanted to avoid talking about anything to do with his past – with who he had been before Afghanistan. And he certainly didn’t want to talk about anything which had to do with his family or early life. That could stay buried in bottom of the box where he’d shoved it all, thank you very much.
But a shrink would want to talk about it all. So he avoided them.
But now he… seemed to be completely dream free. Ironically, he’d almost missed it when it had first happened. It wasn’t as though he got nightmares every night, after all, just most nights. So he hadn’t noticed it the morning when he’d woken up after a night of unbroken sleep, feeling more well-rested than he had in ages. Nor had he, really, when he’d risked sleeping the next night and the same had happened. He’d been surprised and grateful, but not… suspicious.
He was suspicious now. Weeks had gone by, and then a month, and not a single nightmare. And every time he woke up, he’d felt completely rested and refreshed.
It was a bit of a sign of just how screwed up his life had gotten when sleeping well and waking up not feeling like the back end of a mule counted as a red flag.
And if it had just been his nightmares spontaneously resolving and leaving him alone, he might have left well enough alone. Don’t poke a sleeping bear and all of that. Not having nightmares and finally getting some restful sleep at night? That was closer to a miracle than a problem, and he wasn’t about to endanger it for no good reason.
Except that he knew he was having dreams of some kind.
There were mornings when he woke up not only refreshed, but outright happy. Just completely pleased with the state of the world and his place in it. And if that wasn’t a sign that something strange was going on, then nothing was. But there were other states of mind he could wake up in, such as annoyed, amused, frustrated, melancholy – but still rested – curious, motivated, angry, or… very happy… like he’d-spent-his-night-in-company kind of happy. And much of the time, all the various emotions he could wake up with would be tied to someone, and when he would meet them again, that emotion would flare up to the point of being unable to ignore it – but also unable to explain it.
He was having dreams of some kind – of every kind, from the feel of it, but he couldn’t remember a single one. But they were having their effect on him. They were affecting his relationships with the rest of the team, mostly in subtle ways, but in some cases much less subtle.
He’d always been a little… less enamored of Thor than most of the team was, as an example. Once the non-dreams had begun, Thor had quickly become something of an irritant it was impossible to ignore. He got unreasonably annoyed around Thor for some of the smallest things… but couldn’t for the life of him articulate why.
Whereas with Natasha… he had almost the exact opposite reaction. He found himself being much more patient with her, trying to see things from her side more genuinely than he had before. It didn’t always work, but the effort was there. And again, Tony couldn’t say why he was putting in all that work. So far as he could remember, nothing had really changed between them, so there ought to have been very little to no reason for his behavior to change. And even if there had been, he would hope that that it would be a conscious choice on his part.
Something was happening to him. He wanted to say that it was all positive and nothing to worry about, because then he could go about his life not worrying about it… but the effects he was seeing were just those that he could see. There might be more. There might be something going on which he could see or feel or guess at which would build and build until there would be no ignoring it anymore. When there was no chance of changing anything.
So he was putting together a dream recorder, constructing technology which no one had thought was even possible in order to get an insight into what was happening.
Seemed reasonable to him.
But it would be worth it, hopefully. The last few nights had been promising. There had been some shapes, some sounds appearing on the recordings. Enough to let him know that he was on the right track, that the principle he was working with was sound. He just needed to refine it, and get the machine tuned in on his brain just right to get it to work.
With any luck, this time tomorrow, he’d know exactly what it was which was going on in his head.
—•—
Tony woke up feeling a little nervous. It was honestly a little hard to tell if the feeling was residual from whatever it was he’d been dreaming throughout the night, or if it was just what he was feeling in the moment. Which was just another reason to figure out what was happening while he was asleep, in his opinion. It might help him figure out what he was feeling.
So he only allowed himself enough time to get up, put on a pair of pants, get his morning coffee and then sequester himself away in his workshop before he fired up the playback on the recorder.
He had JARVIS play the recording on the holographic screen, blowing up the visual to almost life size. It might be a little fuzzy, but that would be more of an effect of the technology used to record and the nature of what had been recorded, rather than any preexisting definition lost in the blowing up process.
Tony sat, his coffee clasped in his hands, and watched as the scene began to unfold, keenly aware of the bizarreness of having to watch his own dreams, effectively for the first time, while being outside them.
The scene opened, and there Tony was, as viewed from the outside, and he was… in almost the exact position he was now. His dream-self was seated in one of his chairs in the workshop, a mug of something or other in his hands. On the table beside his elbow, there was another steaming mug.
Tony frowned, staring at himself. This didn’t seem like a normal dream… it seemed too normal to be a dream. Since when did he just sit around in a dream, drinking coffee?
Dream-Tony sat, elbows on the table, hands around the mug, staring down into the cup as though there were something fascinating in there, but otherwise did nothing at all. Tony watched him for maybe two full minutes, and nothing changed at all save the curling steam rising from the mug. Dream-Tony didn’t even take a sip – and as a result of unconscious mirroring, neither did Waking-Tony.
He was just about to ask JARVIS to spin the recording forward until there was some perceptible change, either visually or in the audio, when Dream-Tony finally moved. He lifted his head, and Tony had the uncomfortable feeling of being stared through by himself, with Dream-Tony giving him a knowing little smirk before speaking aloud,
“Hey there, Lokes.”
Tony had to stop from looking behind himself, to see if Loki had actually materialized in the room with him and that his dream recording was responding to that somehow—
“Hello, Anthony.”
The smooth voice, even with the slight distortion of the recording, made Tony shiver. He didn’t think he would ever get used to hearing that voice speak his name – any version of his name – in a friendly tone. It always sounded so…
Dream-Tony didn’t seem to share his reservations in the slightest, however. His smile grew as he straightened up and turned in his chair, swiveling around to face the new actor arriving on stage.
Loki entered, and it was all Tony could do to keep from sitting up straighter himself. It was strange enough to have to stare at himself, a near full-body replica moving and acting of its own volition as though it were alive. Add to that someone he knew but knew wasn’t there… it was an odd side effect of using the machine he was going to have to remember for the future, he decided. Just something to be aware of and not be taken by surprise by the next time.
Loki strode into the room – the Dream-Room – with a smile on his face. Tony blinked at him. He was dressed down in simple Earth clothes; a nice button down shirt and a pair of trousers, without a bit of leather to be seen on him. His hair was swept back from his face as usual, and he was standing utterly at ease.
The clothes almost distracted him entirely from the expression on Loki’s face. It was a smile, but it was perhaps the most relaxed smile Tony had ever seen on him. He’d seen Loki smile plenty, of course. Since Loki had been made a part of the Avengers – officially, finally – he’d been seeing a lot more of the mage than he ever thought he would have, and interacting with him, too. He wasn’t all that bad when he wasn’t under the control and manipulation of a Mad Titan and trying to take over the world, but still not quite… fitting in all the way. There was tension between him and the rest of the team, understandably. It made bonding a little bit of a rougher go than it did with anyone else – which was impressive, in some cases. But Tony had seen the man smile plenty of times. Usually it came across as mocking, or at best teasing. When he wasn’t actively taunting the people around him, though, his smiles had a tendency to be kind of stiff. Not false, so much, but definitely strained. They never reached his eyes when he smiled.
This one reached his eyes, and it was like Tony was looking at a completely different person. This Loki, this Dream-Loki which his mind had conjured up, he seemed… he seemed genuinely happy just to see Dream-Tony.
“I see you’ve started preparing drinks in anticipation of seeing me,” Loki said, nodding to the coffee on the table.
Dream-Tony smiled a little wider. “Well, it only seems polite, you know. A host showing the proper manners to his guest and all that.” Dream-Tony reached back to pick up Loki’s mug and handed it to him.
Loki huffed slightly, but took the mug all the same. “If that’s the case, then I believe it would also behoove me to bring a gift on occasion. To show that I am a proper and considerate guest.”
“Yeah, well,” Dream-Tony shrugged. “You know you do plenty for me every time you come here. You don’t need to bring things to be a good guest, when you’re basically making yourself the gift.”
Loki looked startled, and Tony sympathized. That wasn’t something he had expected to hear out of his own mouth, either. He stared at… himself, just the same way Loki was. After a moment or two, Loki cleared his throat, and looked down at the mug in his hands. “And just what have you put in these drinks, Anthony?”
He grinned, a small laugh lurking in his voice when he asked the question, but Dream-Tony only smiled along a little. “Not that it would do much good in here, would it? ‘You can’t get drunk in dreams, just on them.’ Right?”
Loki looked slightly uncomfortable, now, shifting on his feet, avoiding looking Dream-Tony directly in the eye. “I… might not have been quite in my right mind when I said that…”
“I’d be surprised if you had been. I wasn’t at the time. You were seeing to that rather thoroughly.” And now Dream-Tony did smirk.
It was a rather suggestive smirk.
Tony shook his head, coming back and reminding himself that he was here, and awake. He wasn’t in the dream – what he was seeing wasn’t even a dream anymore, it was a recording, all a pure fiction.
But he had been there. Only a few hours ago, that had been him, in his dreams, speaking to a dream version of Loki just like that. And from the sound of it, there had been other times when he’d also been interacting with Loki. Times which his last night dream self recalled happening, even if they hadn’t actually taken place…
“But I’d understand if you didn’t want to keep coming back,” Dream-Tony said, getting Loki to jerk his head up and stare at him with something close to alarm.
“What did you say?”
Dream-Tony shrugged. “I mean, it’s got to be a pain, doesn’t it? Always visiting in my dreams, keeping all of the nightmares out? It’s not like you’re getting all that much rest while you’re here, is it?” Dream-Tony shifted on his seat, his expression gone tight around the edges, too controlled to be genuine, masking whatever it was he’d been feeling at the time. “And I’ve been feeling a lot better when I wake up in the morning. Rested. Not like I’m about to die or spiral instantly into panic attacks. So if you wanted, you could just…”
Dream-Tony trailed off, but only because Loki had decided to step into his space, close enough so that they were touching one another. Dream-Tony looked up, having to tilt his head back even while sitting in the relatively tall shop chairs.
Loki was staring down at him, his gaze intense even to the awake Tony watching from the outside. “Don’t you dare,” he said lowly, his voice gone rough with some emotion. “Don’t you dare tell me to leave and try to claim that it’s my choice which has done so. If you wish me to leave, Anthony, you have to tell me that you want me go.” He set down the mug again without ever having taken a sip from it, and stroked his hands over Dream-Tony’s cheeks. His eyes fluttered shut at the gentle touch.
“Do you want me to leave, Anthony?” Loki whispered.
Dream-Tony swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing, before he shook his head infinitesimally. “No… I don’t want you to leave…”
Loki smiled, Moving efficiently, took Dream-Tony’s cup out of his hands and put it on the table next to his, all without taking his eyes away from the Tony sitting before him. Once free, his hands came back to Dream-Tony, his fingers burying themselves into his hair, tilting Dream-Tony’s head back and he bent down closer to him…
“Why won’t you let me remember, Lokes?”
The question stopped Loki dead, with their faces mere inches apart. Tony held his breath, watching the scene unfold, watching as Loki’s eyes traced over Dream-Tony’s face, seeking a reason for the question thrown at him.
“What?”
“When I wake up, I never remember any of this,” Dream-Tony said. “I remember it all when I’m here but not when I’m awake. You’re… suppressing those memories, I think. I want to know why.” Dream-Tony didn’t pull away, but he narrowed his eyes at Loki, scrutinizing. “You don’t want to leave, don’t want me to want you to leave, but… you won’t let any of this be real. Won’t let us… be.”
Loki stared at him, frozen, before he gave a sigh, his shoulders dropping slightly. Though he never released Dream-Tony. “Because here, this is fantasy, Anthony. Just a dream. Whatever takes place here, when we wake, we can pretend as though it had never happened. Because it hasn’t. We may continue with our lives just as before, and nothing need change.”
“You can pretend, I have no choice,” Dream-Tony pointed out, but without any heat. “And I seriously doubt the validity of ‘nothing ever changing’ because of a dream.”
Dream-Tony reached up, mirroring Loki in running his fingers up and through his hair.
“I think we’ve both changed for the better because of this dream, don’t you?”
Loki huffed a small laugh, bumping their foreheads together, then their noses, and then finally bringing their lips together in a small kiss. A small kiss which deepened the longer it went on, before they finally broke apart again, flushed and slightly out of breath.
“Sleep with me, Loki? Just… sleep with me? I think we could both use some sleep.”
Loki hummed, hardly sounding put out by the idea, and nodded.
Tony watched as Dream-Tony stood up and took Loki by the hand, leading him out of the workshop and towards the door which would lead them to the elevators.
As they passed by where Tony was standing, Tony feeling a little dizzy and unmoored by everything he’d been seeing and hearing, Dream-Tony made direct eye contact with him. It was impossible, or should have been, but it certainly seemed to be the case, that as Dream-Tony walked past Waking-Tony, he sent him a look which told him to pay attention. To use his damned brain.
They left the room, and the playback of the recording stopped. Most likely the dream had continued in the bedroom, and Dream-Tony and Loki went to sleep in Tony’s bed… how successful that was, when they were already in a dream, he had no idea. Though that might help explain another reason why he was feeling so rested in the morning, if he was sleeping while he was asleep.
Tony put down his coffee. It had gone tepid and he hadn’t taken a single sip.
Well, that explained a lot. It was possible that what he’d just watched was a random dream, and not one of a chain, the way Dream-Tony had been very clearly suggesting. But… Tony doubted it.
Awake, Tony might not remember what had happened in dreams, but when he was in his dreams it looked as though he remembered just fine. It was probably safe to say that in his dreams, he could remember what had been happening while he was awake just fine.
Tony in his dreams knew that Tony awake would be watching everything which had happened.
Tony was giving himself the entire rundown of what had been happening, now that there was a way to get that message out. Now he just had to decide what to do with the information.
He sat and thought, but it didn’t take long to decide what he was going to do.
Picking up his coffee cup, he went upstairs. He was going to need to brew up two fresh cups if he wanted to drop in on Loki and give him one hell of a surprise.