Cattail, Daisy, Purple Violet
Daisy: Four things that make your character happy.
In spite of his self-hate — he can on occasion find satisfaction or even joy with certain aspects of his life. I don’t say ‘happiness,’ because he’s rarely ‘happy.’ Only the first thing on this list can actually induce happiness — the others are things that give him a degree of pleasure. These things include, above all else:
His wife. Her, in her entirety. Her smile, her laugh, the way she teases him and pouts when she doesn’t get what she wants from him, the way her body looks when she dances and when she fights, the way she breaks down his defenses and gives him the chance to safely weep like an infant or smile with real joy, the fire in her that burns hot enough to send a tingle up his spine that lies just on the cusp of what is comfortable but not quite hot enough to singe his skin, the way she loves him, and the way he loves her — Everything.
A long, involved, intellectual conversation, preferably with someone of great intelligence over a cup of tea and a game of chess. And that the other be interested in what he has to say and be interesting in their own right is a must.
Danger. He absolutely gets off on being in potentially life-threatening situations, and the more difficult to escape, the better. He likes being able to use all parts of his skill — wit, combat and magical technique, and strength — to save himself. This includes any and all sparring, especially with opponents who can truly match him.
Solitude (partial or complete. If Emma is with him, he still considers it solitude). And preferably somewhere he’s never been, or rarely goes. Solitude in his prison can be nice, but it’s tedious after a while. So he’ll seek out uninhabited and pristine places throughout the cosmos to go be alone with his thoughts for a while. His places of choice tend to resemble Asgard, though… mountainous, cold, and densely-forested. These little ventures are necessary for his sanity.
Purple Violet: Are there any topics your character dodges?
He doesn’t so much dodge topics as… become irrationally angry at anything he doesn’t want to talk about. And there’s a lot of that.
He won’t discuss his birth parents, true heritage, adoptive family (except to express contempt, or if Frigga comes up, conflicted affection), the incident with Svadhilfari or any of his other humiliations and/or failures, what happened with Thanos and the Other between his fall from the Bifrost and his first appearance on earth in over a millennium, his emotions (good or ill), and many other things that I’m probably forgetting. He doesn’t enjoy discussing most of those topics with his wife (though he will if she insists, and emotions are the exception), he will firmly decline to talk about them if you’re someone he likes, and he will probably threaten to kill you if he doesn’t like or know you and you bring any of that up in his presence.
Basically, get too nosy and you run the risk of snapping him from cordial to murderous, especially if your intentions aren’t clear. He is touchy and sensitive about practically everything, so the best course of action is probably to just let him discuss what he wants to discuss, and try not to pry.
Anyone who he’s allowed to get to know him well enough that prying would be met with mild irritation rather than full-on anger seems to have already figured out what topics to avoid. That’s probably why they were able to get so close in the first place.
