Work Text:
Vast sheets of snow, a deafening still of white stretches of land all around him and Tony can't think of anything more soothing.
He feels like he's been melting into the ice.
There's a white-lined, semitransparent floe right in front of his face, right under his nose. A sight to the other side, while also its gravestone. Tony thinks he can catch glimpses of a brand new world from behind, pictures dispersed and gone like shoals stirred in the water. Just enough to wet his curiosity. For Tony is nothing if not a researcher.
As he breathes onto it, warm puffs of air do away with the floe little by little, but at the same time they tinge it up with white, merging its surface into the plain background.
Suddenly there's a familiar snap: the sharp, crackling sound springing as if from the back of Tony's consciousness. Then there's just enough time for him to tilt his head up, see, and scream.
“Stark!”
Tony clutches at the hand that shakes him awake. Lets it comfort him, ground him back in reality, even if only for a moment before the inevitable breaks through: the hand is cold. As cold as it is pale, in the dark of night practically non-existent amongst the white sheets. He shakes it off with poorly covered disdain.
Silence falls, and as it stretches on, Loki seems to be contemplating the ceiling - possibly deriving a world's worth of serenity from it, given how at the same time Tony fans a building urge to kick Loki out of his bed, out of his tower, out of his realm. However that might play out -
“What is this dream that troubles you so?” Ice melts.
And wherever this came from, or plans on going, it's sorely missed Tony's timetable.
“What's it to you?”
.
In the pale moonlight, Loki's eyebrows knit together. “Why, I pry on your worst nightmares in order to make them come true most accurately, of course.” Ice breaks. “Shall the need arise. Why did you think I asked?”