not saying I’ve fallen down a hole of unmet Steve/Loki needs but
TFW you (re)discover a pairing that makes you want all the filthy dubcon garbage and hostile forced-teamup tropes...
...and fandom goes “Oh yes! That pairing! Whaddya want? We’ve got fluff, angsty fluff, mundane-AU meet cute, weirdass-AU meet cute, established relationship, one character discovering to his anguish that his True Love has been horribly whumped, established relationship fluff, domestic a/b/o mpreg...”
And like. It’s not that I’m judging people who want that out of their Steve/Loki. Except in the excruciatingly polite way where it’s so far removed from anything I get out of the characters that it might as well have been beamed straight in from Bizarroland. I mean, yes, I’m sitting in my corner going what the fuck is this nonsense, but I’ve been in fandom long enough to know that the range of what people want to zero in on--and what they’re happy to handwave out of the way--is staggeringly wide and varied. You do you, YKINMK(ATO), etc.
And some of the fic and headcanon does zero in on some of the things I find interesting, over and beyond how disgustingly pretty the mental images are. Both grew up societally-defective outcasts in a codependent relationship with a far-more-popular golden boy, and they went very different directions from there. Both are contrarian little shits strongly motivated by spite (Loki) or defiance (Steve). One is pathologically deceptive, the other is terrible at lying and (overly?) attached to his integrity. Steve-as-Cap has all kinds of surface similarities to Thor for Loki to drive himself crazy over, but they come from a very different place because Steve wasn’t born into a position of entitlement to power. Loki has all kinds of history with mind control that Steve is likely to be touchy about after the whole Winter Soldier thing. Plus buckets of issues all around re: eugenics, racial superiority, (impulsive attempts at) genocide... basically, every inch of common ground has the potential for bitter conflict, unexpected bonding, or both, depending on how you set up the situation. And the fandom output I’ve seen does grab some of this and run with it.
But. But. But. IT’S ALL SO SHIPPY. In the way where them being enemies in canon is just an obstacle on the way to the shippiness. And here I am sitting in my back-alley dumpster, rubbing my grimy little hands together and going GIVE ME ALL THE ENEMY TROPES.
Give me all the grudging team-ups and resentful bickering. Give me the fragile situational trust, the bracing for betrayal, the attempts to control disappointment when it inevitably comes (or the standoffish This doesn’t change anything when it doesn’t). I want them as enemies forced to save each other’s lives or--reluctantly!--patch the other up post-whumpage because of Reasons, hating and rationalizing every step of the way. I want the unexpected discoveries of common ground to be uncomfortable as fuck, to lead to deep suspicion and viciously personal insults and fun new ways to hurt each other. I want them thrown into survival situations even as they’re still fighting over some end goal. I want “forced team-ups” where it’s all a ruse one of them concocted to get something from the other. I want fucked-up triangulation with Asgardian family drama and politics. And yeah, I want all the skeevy dubcon--from externally imposed fuck-or-die scenarios, to manipulative fuckery as the means to some other end, to Loki fucking with Steve as an end in and of itself.
Just. Yeah, I wanna see them together. I want them playing off each other, I want it getting complicated and personal, and hell yeah I want to see them mash faces and/or other body parts because goddammit I have needs here. But from what I’ve dug up so far, the parts of fandom with similar interests want them doing all that as lovers, and are happy to skip over the first part of the enemies-to-lovers trope to get there. Which is cool if that’s what you’re into. Zero in on what you like, etc etc etc. BUT I WANT THEM DOING ALL THAT AS ENEMIES. And it’s been. Um. Frustrating. Dipping my toes into what’s out there.
ANYWAY, I realize MCU fandom is vast and whatever I’ve seen has only scratched the surface. So if anyone has Steve/Loki recs for Quality Enemy Tropes(TM), filthy dubcon/noncon, enemies-to-friends-and/or-lovers, fucked-up darkfic, or plain old scorching-hot PWP that doesn’t gloss over their canon relationship... bring it. I’m violently allergic to alt-setting AUs (mundane/no-powers, fantasy/historical unrelated to canon, omegaverse, soulbond-verse, etc), but canon divergence and any crack that at least attempts to handwave a canon-verse explanation is cool. MCU, comics, and TV are all fair game.
