Work Text:
The man sighed and closed his eyes. His arm — a fancy prosthetic, the look of which made Tony itch with something akin to familiarity, an unwelcome feeling — went up to rub his forehead.
He looked tired. Moved, too, like he was sad and exhausted, and that gesture — hand, forehead — was a sign he didn’t care anymore for how he was seen.
Tony had no idea how he knew it. How he recognized the man’s moods, how he felt the glimpses of his habits. It was starting to piss him off.
He swirled around, breaking his attention from the man — a strangely hard task — and tried to play with the thing laying on a shelf, a fake cheap trinket, typical mystic crap. He failed. His hand went right through it.
That was really pissing him off, too.
“Someone there?”
Tony trailed in the middle of his swearing and froze. The man, who was sitting in the other corner of the room just a moment ago, now stared in his direction, the look of his blue-grey eyes piercing and intense.
“Nothing you are supposed to see, buddy.”
The look of concentration turned to resigned annoyance.
“A ghost. Right. Just what I needed.”
What?
Tony scoffed.
“Excuse you—”
“No offense to your afterlife problems, pal. But you might’ve had better timing,” he flashed Tony a crooked and unhappy smile and turned back to his desk drawer.
“You’re the one who decided to bother me, not the other way around,” Tony grumbled (although, to be fair to the man, for him it was understandable — it was his place, after all). “And, for your information, there are no ghosts here.”
The man stopped his search.
“Huh?”
“I’m not a ghost,” Tony sighed.
This wasn’t turning out to be one of his best days.
“You aren’t a ghost,” the man repeated, now looking somewhere in Tony’s general direction with a skeptical face.
“Yes, because ghosts aren’t real. Just as the rest of this,” Tony waved around the guy’s setup, “magical bullshit. Energies? Spirits raising? Really? Am I truly supposed to believe in this quackery?”
“Uh-huh. Sure. Quackery. One moment, though. You are aware that you’re currently missing a body, aren’t ya?”
Tony closed his eyes and stifled the urge to scream or throw something at the wall. Not that he’d manage to do so.
“I am,” he said very, very calmly. “But since it contradicts all laws of physics, I’d choose another hypothesis that would be more plausible, like— I’m currently lying somewhere unconscious and hallucinating you.”
It was a very annoying hallucination. That same magic shop, tiny and dingy, almost always empty except for today, when this asshole appeared to sit here sadly, swear at the world around, search for some hidden trinket and be rude to a couple of chance clients.
He wasn’t looking as sad right now. Instead, he nodded seriously at Tony’s words, his face schooled into a calm expression that hid beneath it a condescending amusement.
Tony wanted him to stop doing it.
Tony wanted him to stop being so fucking miserable.
Tony wanted his brain to be done with this free show of sad hot guys who Tony could get a read on weirdly well.
“Sure,” the guy said instead and turned away from Tony.
“Sure? That’s all you have to say?”
“Well, there’s not that many working arguments against a solipsism theory, is there? I ain’t confident in my chances to convince you I’m real. So— I’ll just deal with an occasionally swearing disembodied voice echoing around my walls while I look for my thing. It’s no burden.”
Tony harrumphed. The man let out a short laugh — more of a breath than a sound.
“Unless you do wanna use my services, of course.”
Tony didn’t see his face, and yet the guy’s voice was changed, became more playful and more open as if the banter managed to get out some hidden spark from him.
“I’ll pass, thanks. I prefer not to do business with shady strangers.”
“Aren’t I a hallucination of yours? I thought your brain couldn’t create a person you’ve never seen, so I can’t be a total stranger.”
Tony stilled.
He most likely wasn’t. Maybe they weren’t too close in real life, had met occasionally, or just once— enough for Tony to keep the memory of a sad face and striking eyes; maybe his brain concocted the image from several different people.
He wasn’t going to talk about it.
“Maybe I’m just better than others,” Tony replied, but it was too late; the pause was noticeable, and the man was looking in his direction again, eyebrows frowned.
“Are you okay?” he asked, and fuck, what a laughable question.
Tony should’ve been the one asking it; the guy looked the least okay Tony had ever seen in anyone, and yet here he was, his voice soft and gentle and sincere, all banter forgotten, as if the answer would’ve changed anything. Like if Tony was not, it mattered.
“I’m fine,” Tony told him.
For reasons unknown, the lie barely managed to get out, fell from his tongue heavy and fake, an unwilling messenger; something about the man repelled it.
“Are you?” he added, his voice hasty and fake. “What are you looking for?”
A pause; the man stared for a moment as if considering whether to let the change of topic slide and then sighed.
“A present.”
“Another magic bullshit?”
“No,” the man shook his head, chuckling, and there was nothing in the world more heart-wrenching than that sound. “Never. The person who wanted to gift it would hate this stuff.”
“Sounds like a reasonable guy. Where is he? And who is the present for?”
“You ever been told about minding your own business?”
“I’m a nosy asshole. And this hallucination isn’t very enriching.”
That got him an eye-roll.
“A present was for me. For my birthday. But he never got to gift it.” The stranger closed his eyes, pausing; schooled himself into something working, built up a human from the shattered remains. “It wasn’t a very birthday-appropriate present anyway.”
The desperation in his voice said otherwise.
“What happened to him?” Tony tried to soften his voice, to sound less like a dick, no matter what he said; it seemed like a heavy topic.
“He’s dead now.”
“Oh.”
“And I can’t even— what’s good with this magical bullshit if I can’t even talk to him?” There was a sound of wood breaking and a quiet swear. “Where the hell— fuck. Fuck!”
Tony shuffled in place. It had to be awkward— being a witness to a stranger’s grief — and yet, somehow, it wasn’t.
He only wanted to place a hand on the man’s shoulder, to comfort, to soothe his pain, but it wouldn’t work — he wouldn’t feel it, wouldn’t see, wouldn’t know.
Tony’s feet stood on the floor without feeling it. His arms went through any object. He tried — before the man came here, he tried and tried and tried, but the only thing he had felt just a little was a simple dark ring that lay forgotten by the books on the floor, in the corner Tony had first appeared at. He thought he sensed the coldness of the metal, the etchings of the engraving (always yours), but it was only fleeting. Tony couldn’t lift it up. Couldn’t do anything.
“I’m a pretty shitty medium, aren’t I,” the man told Tony, breaking him out of his thoughts.
He sounded defeated.
“You can hear me. It should count for something.”
“Aren’t you not a ghost?”
“Who am I to argue with your delusions?”
“Right.” A sigh. “I can hear you.”
It was mostly the sadness. The inability to do anything. The urge to fix.
Tony opened his mouth and said, “Can you try to help me?”
The medium stood up from his desk. There were no comments on Tony’s change of mind, no sarcastic response.
“Okay,” the man said, his voice thoughtful and considering. “What is your thing?”
“Thing?”
“The anchor. Unfinished business. Why are you here? What called to you?”
“I—” Tony paused and tried to— the other parts of the hallucination were so vivid, so detailed, he must’ve— but there was nothing but fear, sudden and horrible, rising from the thought about his supposed death. “I don’t know.”
The medium frowned.
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t— I can’t fucking remember,” he breathed out.
Not a thing. Not since appearing there. Nothing but his own name.
The confession was a revelation; an absolution; a transformation. The world changed and yet stayed the same; the man opposite him stepped forward and closed his eyes, a picture of concentration.
“You’re not dead.”
“Huh?”
“You’re— you don’t feel like a normal ghost. You are actually lying somewhere unconscious, hallucinating it all.”
“Right. Wow. Um. So?”
“So we find who you are. We bring you back.”
We get you to let go of your dead love, Tony continued silently.
The thought had a strange shape. Like some part of him disagreed.
“Good plan. How do we do it?”
“At first, let’s make you a more pleasant form. This disembodied echoing voice ain’t good for my headache.”
“You sure it’s not just your hangover?”
“Oh screw you,” the guy laughed, and Tony’s chest grew warm and pleased.
It was important that this man could laugh. Whatever the connection between them was, it was growing stronger.
“Come. I promise I’ll do all I can.”
He was kind. Despite all the grief he radiated, he was kind, and for a moment Tony couldn’t but believe in his words, in their meaning, in their intention. He envisioned his stranger getting him back. He imagined his memories — his life — returning to him.
A fickle dream, no doubt. And yet, Tony followed his aspiring savior to another room, no questions asked, moving with all the weirdness of a being that lacked a body.
Neither of them noticed the ring on the floor. Awakened by Tony’s motion, it rolled a few inches to the center of the room, twirled at its place, and fell silent, with a hologram appearing above it, unseen by any living soul:
Marry me, snowflake?