Little mini fic thing I composed mostly in the shower. Partly inspired by @raven-brings-light‘s very sweet fic Baby It’s Cold Outside; governing metaphor borrowed from @incredifishface‘s Cocky Boys and Serpent. (All of these fics are highly recommended.)
People like me don’t end up with people like you.
Sure, we may seem confident and sexy. Some of us might be good dressers, or good dancers. Even the restless intelligence might be a turn-on for those it doesn’t frighten away. True, we are a bit prickly – but the sharp wit can be sexy, too; and if it’s hard to get close to us, how much more satisfying and rewarding for those who manage it! But soon enough you realize that “a bit prickly” isn’t the half of it. This isn’t a cactus, full of life-giving water and sweet nourishing flesh for those who can find their way past the needles. No, it’s a dark, dense thicket of brambles in here.
Of course, then you’ll see us as a puzzle; a challenge. How to light a path through the shadowy forest? And how does a person grow into such a thicket in the first place? There must be something behind it, beneath it. There must be a great treasure hidden at the center, a beautiful princess sleeping in a tower; why else would someone grow such a maze of thorns, but to protect something precious? There must be fertile soil here, rich enough to grow a magnificent garden; how else could the brambles grow so thick and so high?
But what if there is nothing at the center of the maze? Does it never occur to you that, if you can see no roses on the thornbushes, brambles might be the only things that grow here? You’ve fallen in love not with the forest itself, but with the princess you imagine you’ll battle your way through to awaken, with the garden you’ll plant once you’ve cleared all these thorns. To a hammer, they say, everything looks like a nail. You are a hero, so there must be a quest, and a reward at its end. You are a blazing torch, so the darkness must be dispelled and the lost treasure found. You yourself are so full of light and purpose that you cannot imagine what it is to be a bleak wilderness, with no aim beyond itself.
If you ever realize it, of course, you’ll leave, to find a quest that might bear fruit. Or maybe you never will realize it, and we will leave instead – because we’ve grown so weary of watching you beat yourself bloody against the unyielding thorns; or because when you imagine that you’re hacking your way through to where our true self is hiding, you’re cutting into our only true self, and the pain is too much to bear. People like me don’t end up with people like you; one of us will eventually give up.
People like me don’t end up with anyone.
You can find more of my (only occasionally) depressing-ass Loki & Thorki fic here.
Someone just found this (somehow) and liked it… I’d completely forgotten that I wrote it. Gotta put this in the “Tumblr Vignettes” collection on AO3…
Loki is the Philosopher King 