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The heavy breathing and twitching woke Tony first. He frowned, only having a few moments to try and understand what was going on before there was a sudden, agonised shout. Loki jerked up in bed, and Tony startled and immediately sat up as well.
“Lights, J. Low,” he ordered.
His AI followed his commands and Tony looked over at his lover. Loki’s hair was a mess and his eyes were wide and wild. He had sweat dripping down his body and he was white as a sheet.
This wasn’t the first time this had happened, but it still ached Tony’s heart to see.
“Lokes?” Tony said quietly. “Babe? Bambi? Sweetheart? Sunshine?”
He used all the nicknames he had for the mage, all the words no one else had ever said in an affectionate light.
Loki’s head jerked to the side, his eyes alighting on Tony. He let out a shaking breath. “A-Anthony?”
“Hey, Loki,” Tony said softly, reaching out and touching the other man’s hand. “I’m okay. You’re okay. We’re here. We’re in our bed in the tower.”
Loki gave a full body shudder before he reached for Tony and curled into his embrace. Tony made a soothing noise and ran his fingers through the other man’s hair. Loki’s arms came around him tightly, holding on for life.
Loki’s nightmares were always silent affairs until he woke up with a single scream or shout. He would then curl into Tony as if he was Loki’s only anchor in a storm.
He never said what he’d dreamt about, not until hours later (if at all) but Tony never pushed. The only thing he cared about was that Loki wasn’t pushing him away.
It was why Tony started to talk, the way he always did.
“Do you remember our first date, babe? How I took you to the opera and you only realised it was a date when I took your hand in our booth?”
Loki didn’t answer, but Tony didn’t expect him to.
“You looked so startled, and I thought I’d fucked everything up, but then you smiled at me like I’d just performed a miracle. You leant in and kissed me. You’d then said ‘about time’ because you’re an asshole. But that’s okay, because I love that about you.”
He wished he could press a kiss to Loki’s head, but he settled for rubbing Loki’s back.
“And do you remember our first real vacation in Malibu? The sun shined all week, and getting you in swim trunks is still one of my fondest memories. And that photo of you sipping a matai with sunglasses on as you lay in the centre of the pool on that iron man float? I still have that in the lab. I loved that week. No wonder I couldn’t resist proposing to you by the end.”
He could feel Loki starting to relax as the memories of happier times took the place of his darker thoughts.
“And remember coming home? The celebration JARVIS and the bots put on. I didn’t care that I was cleaning up streamers for a week. It was worth it to see them happy and to watch you smile.”
“I remember,” Loki whispered.
His voice was small and nothing like his normal confident tone, but it sent relief through Tony regardless, it meant it had been a bad nightmare, but not a horrible one. If Loki was responding so easily, they might even be able to fall back asleep.
But, even if they couldn’t, Tony didn’t care. He’d stayed up all night with Loki in the past and he’d do it again.
The only thing that mattered was making sure his husband was okay, and if that meant recounting a thousand happy memories from their life together; he’d do it in a heartbeat.