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The finger that scraped across his goatee didn’t burn with heat, or bite with cold, but there was a presence that lingered, a static charge that stung the skin. Tony had felt something similar when Stephen’s eldritch magic came too close for comfort during their missions, but he’d always trusted Stephen’s control.
The apologetic kisses he’d got to his magic-singed skin made up for any accidents.
‘Stephen?’ Tony murmured, not quite sure when he’d fallen asleep, but the way he was being teased with soft touches and lingering kisses was how he was usually woken.
No. That was actually stinging now.
Jerking awake, Tony gazed up into the face of the man he loved, those gorgeous blue eyes he constantly teased Stephen about, serenading him with any song he could find that mentioned blue eyes.
The eyes above him were haunted, creases overlapping in the sickly grey skin beneath them. It was a visceral reaction that had him lurching back, fear squirming in his stomach as he watched the extra eye in Stephen’s forehead close.
‘Pretty sure you’ve not been able to do that before, or is this another one of those things only Wong knows about?’ Tony gasped out, begging his heart to settle, confusion settling over him as he quickly glanced around, wondering where that rasping whispering was coming from.
This wasn’t the Sanctum.
‘Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in years,’ Stephen said, his laugh a dry, brittle thing. He drew himself back, sitting on the edge of the bed, the only piece of furniture in this room that wasn’t broken or caked in dust.
‘A nightmare? Is this the part where you try to kill me? Some sort of unresolved internal conflict bubbling away in my mind? Come on, gimme a break.’ Tony fell back on his elbows.
‘A different reality perhaps, not your dreamscape,’ Stephen told him.
There was something…familiar about the room. Sitting up, Tony’s gaze darted from the man perched on the edge of his bed to the crumbling structure of the room he found himself in. There was discoloration on one of the walls that matched the shape of the huge, ugly mirror Tony hated in Stephen’s bedroom.
The tattered pieces of curled paper cruelly neglected in the corner of the room was the Pink Floyd poster Stephen treasured, the signed one Tony had gotten him for their first anniversary.
This was the Sanctum.
Floundering in disbelief, Tony looked towards his anchor, his strength in times of turmoil. Stephen’s hair was scraggly, greasy, his goatee grown out of the meticulous styling Stephen insisted on despite his hands, the vain, proud thing. It was his hands Tony couldn’t look away from, gnarled, twisted things carved from onyx.
The longer he looked, the louder the whispers grew, plucking at his mind, churning in his soul.
‘Look away, dear heart,’ Stephen hid his hands in his sleeves.
Dear heart? Since when did…
‘The Darkhold has many uses. Scrying across the multiverse is one of them.’
‘The dark…what now?’
‘We don’t have much time.’ Stephen rose to standing, hesitating as Tony flinched away, feet propelling him further up the bed.
Every molecule of his body was repulsed by this creature. This not quite Stephen.
Sitting beside him, he extended one of his darkness-dipped hands to Tony, his face softening when it wasn’t taken. ‘He could never love you as I do.’
‘I think I need-’
‘You belong with me.’
Tony had only heard that unforgiving tone towards their enemies, and he reacted to it now, steeling himself.
‘I belong to myself,’ he snapped, glaring at this sinister version of the man he loved.
Their gazes held for a long while, a rumbling in the distant broken purple sky beyond the room wrapping around them.
‘Your stubbornness has always been your most endearing quality, most infuriating too,’ Stephen finally whispered, breaking his stare. ‘I don’t have the time to explain now. Already your world seeks to draw you back, but I promise you, dear heart, I will find you again. We will be reunited.’
‘Afraid not. I’d like to wake up-’
‘Tony!’ The fingers that caught his jaw were scalding cold, nails piercing his skin. ‘I will find you again.’
His body was paralyzed, muscles locked into place, gaze captured by that grotesque third eye.
I can’t breathe.
‘I love you.’
‘Tony?’
Violently jerking, Tony found his hands clutching the edge of Stephen’s rustic vanity, his heart slamming against the underside of his ribs as he shook. He was staring at his own, terrified reflection as Stephen stood behind him, concern furrowing his brows.
‘Sweetheart? You spaced out for a moment there. I told you not to-’
‘Get rid of it.’
‘Tony, whatever you saw in the Mirror of Finvarra-’
‘Get rid of it, Stephen.’ Something in his voice made Stephen pause and look at him again. It might have been the tremor in his voice, his fingers digging into the vanity as he fought to stop shivering despite the warmth of the bedroom, but Stephen only paused for a few moments before the mirror was gone, tossed out a portal or in another dimension or something.
The monstrous eyesore of a mirror had always unnerved Tony, but now he had proof it was evil. Stephen always warned him to be careful around the artifacts in the Sanctum, but he’d never believed the mirror to be malicious.
‘Tony, whatever it was you saw-’ Stephen stopped, glancing around as if something Tony couldn’t hear had caught his attention. ‘You’re safe,’ he reassured after a moment.
Tony shook himself as if that could shake the vestige of the vision, nightmare or whatever it was that creepy gothic mirror had conjured. ‘I need a drink,’ he spat, ignoring the hurt on Stephen’s face as he dodged his hand, needing to get out of the room.
He didn’t see Stephen watch him leave, nor did he see his sorcerer place a trembling hand on the wall where the mirror had once hung, seeing a crack in reality where Tony could not.