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In his dreams, Tony often sees him bathing in the river, its waters brown and murky, reflecting the nest of trees around it. It might be autumn. It should be cold, but Tony never feels it. Perhaps he simply isn't a stickler for unnecessary details.
In his dreams, Loki is naked and Tony is not, yet dream after dream he is never able to catch sight of an inch of the god's alabaster skin, not even his face. All he sees is water, the form of him; the glistening wetness and the slopping sound of liquid movement. This is all his imagination will give him.
Tony does little in these dreams but watch Loki wash himself, half submerged and always veiled by a thin white sheet that covers his entire body, as if he is wrapped up in a handkerchief. As if he fancies himself a ghost, or one who shies away from all eyes.
In Tony's dreams his throat is always parched. There are always specific moments when Loki rubs at his shoulder blades or smooths a hand along his ribcage that makes Tony wonder sometimes if the veil upon Loki's skin might be sentient, the way it presses itself onto the god's flesh. Sometimes he wonders if it would mind if Tony were to press his mouth over it, to form a vacuum with his lips and suck the water onto the desiccated cavern of his throat.
~o0o0o~
Tony's dream-self never examines the damp forest bed he spends his dreams in. He never ventures beyond the pool and never looks too hard into the water; sensing unnameable things that move below its murky red-brown depths. A voice within him whispers that so long as he does not look too hard nothing but Loki will be real, so he merely leaves them be. Not everything in his dreams are worth investigating, and he doesn't want this evasive fantasy to turn into a nightmare just yet.
For now, he simply wants to watch Loki bath.
To be honest, Tony is never sure if it is Loki whom he watches every night, crouched behind coniferous bushes as the wet, heavy smell of the throbbing earth rises from the ground.
Deep beneath him, Tony can feel the earth having sex with itself. Everything under him is in a constant state of writhing, rubbing, fucking. He can feel the moistness of the earth as if part of it, black and inviting and wet. Sometimes he dips his hands into the muck, imagines smearing it over white sheet. Staining it, rubbing his soil into it, making it black. Parting the limbs beneath the sheets in the most tender act of descecration and forcing himself between them. Pressing Loki's cocooned body with its freshly-soiled skin into the earth's rich, fertile loam.
Tony wants Loki seized, hauled out of the protective waters of his pool where the god keeps himself clean and solitary and untouchable. He wants Loki stained. He wants to rub himself into every crevice, pour silt into that opened mouth and press his hand over it to keep it there.
He wants to say to the god; 'Swallow me. Let me swallow you.'
But these are just dreams within dreams, and in real life Tony sees no veil-draped ivory fleshed alien god; and even in his dreams Loki never looks up from his compulsive self-cleaning.
Some days, he thinks it's a good thing he doesn't have Loki - in real life or dreams; because he thinks he could quite easily bury that alabaster body in quicksand, find beauty and tenderness in the way the god would trash and gasp for breath beneath stained white sheets - until he eventually surrenders, finally hold himself so beautifully, exquisitely still for Tony to do with him as he will.
Tony thinks its a good thing these are just dreams.
~o0o0o~