A/N: Once again, just a quick spoiler warning!
I wrote this to fill the void as to what I thought might happen after the Season 2 finale, but I thought I may as well turn it into a proper story and give it a purpose rather than just have it fester on my computer to then perish once Season 3 came out.
And this time, my story about the Johnsons actually includes Olaf, yay!
As much as Mike Johnson griped over how he was always left to be the serious, responsible older brother, it was the thing in his life which gave him the most purpose. His family pissed him off at the best of times, but as of late he had felt closer to them than ever. Maybe it was because there were finally no major secrets left driving them away from each other. Whatever it was, it brought Mike more satisfaction than he cared to admit. It was a shame that it took three separate upheavals, one for each of his younger brothers, to bring them all together.
Anders was the brother who had experienced the biggest calamity. "Oh my God. Oh my fucking God," Anders said, sitting down and putting his head in his hands. It was finally beginning to sink in all that had happened to him lately. The whole damn debacle – Helen, her whirlwind entry into his life, the strange but powerful connection they seemed to have, her ability to better his business. Her beautiful tits. All that amazing sex they had. Then of course, bloody Natalie. She broke into his house, pointing a fucking crossbow at his chest! And Helen, beautiful Helen, had to reveal that she too was a goddess. Watching a woman get slaughtered in front of his eyes wasn't a sight he ever wished to relive.
And if that wasn't perverted enough, the goddess spirit of his dead girlfriend went beyond the grave to find another body to dwell in. It was rare, but it was on days like this where Anders wasn't so fond of being a god.
"You alright, mate?" Mike asked kindly as he settled down beside him, handing Anders a beer. There were just five people in Anders's office that evening – Anders, Mike, their other two brothers Axl and Ty and their very youthful looking grandfather, Olaf.
"What the fuck do you think, Mike?! My wife was murdered right before my very eyes, I nearly got killed with a fucking crossbow, and then the reincarnation of my dead wife turns up in the form of my idiot brother's flatmate," Anders snapped.
"Hey, don't call me that, dickhead!" Axl interjected automatically, but he was met with a death stare from Mike. Mike was trying to keep the room under control, and petty arguments and name-calling were not going to help.
"Sorry…" he muttered, immediately regretting his outburst. The room was silent for a minute. Anders was perched on the edge of the couch, a look of disbelief etched into his face. On one side of him was Mike, and at the edge on the other side was Olaf. Axl was sitting in Anders' desk chair, and Ty was slightly further away, having pulled out a chair from the table in the middle of the office. Anders' problems seemed to have temporarily subsided into a stunned silence; the question was who was going to break next.
"At least you had a wife," Ty lamented, gazing miserably at the wall. Ah-ha. Wherever Anders went, Ty always followed. Even when he didn't want to, which was about ninety percent of the time. Poor Ty always seemed to be unhappy. It didn't help that he had been Hod, god of all things dark and cold. Because of him, the office often possessed a chill that wasn't normally present. On this occasion, however, the chill was purely figurative; he was upset because Dawn, the love of his life, literally had no memory of them ever being together or even who he was. Mike had little sympathy for Ty in this instance; he had brought it upon himself by going and turning into a mortal without first consulting the rest of his family. Ty's dilemmas were probably the most difficult to handle despite not being the most urgent matter; but Mike knew that Anders would knock his problems into perspective, as he was more than capable of doing.
"Yeah, and she's dead!" exclaimed Anders in frustration. He was pissed off with Ty's gloomy outlook at the best of times, but this raining on Anders' parade was a little too much. "And YOU had a wife – Loki's psycho daughter, remember?" Ty shot him a dark look. Eva, a goddess he had married, was killed by their mother. He preferred to shut her memory from his mind.
Olaf's head was cocked to one side, his mouth slightly open in bemusement. Or he may have been stoned; it was difficult to tell with him.
"So, were the two of you actually married?" he asked slowly.
"No, we were just pretending because we thought the batshit crazy bible chick would be more willing to conduct business with us. It was just a cover. FUCK!" Anders cried, taking the ring off his finger and chucking it across the room. It bounced a few times before rolling over to a wall.
"It's okay to be upset, Anders," Mike said, taking a sip from his beer.
"No, I'm not upset, I'm fucking pissed off!"
"Potayto, potahto," murmured Axl as he slowly spun in Anders' chair. He too, had faced a kick to the guts that day – it was Gaia (his flatmate and the girl he loved) who had assumed the new role as Idunn, the goddess spirit that had previously lived through Helen. This meant that it was now Gaia's destiny to fall in love with Bragi (Anders), leaving Axl forgotten and shit out of luck.
Except Anders, who normally loved beautiful women in all shapes and forms, had reached the end of his tether with the advent of a 21-year old embodying the spirit of his dead girlfriend. At least for now.
"This sucks! I mean, okay, she was bordering on the nymphomaniac control freak side, but she was my nymphomaniac control freak, you know?" Ty rolled his eyes. Ty himself had been intimately familiar with Helen once or twice before destiny reared its ugly head. "And once again the poet speaks words of wisdom."
Anders turned to Mike. "Why is he here? He's not even a god anymore. In fact, he should get the fuck out of here. I am in shock, and I am in mourning, and he should respect that."
"Ty, be nice to your brother," Mike said tiredly. It was an expression he had used multiple times over the years when he was raising the two buggers. Even though it was normally him telling Anders to be nice to Ty, not the other way around. But as he took another swig from his beer, he couldn't stop a small smile crossing his lips. Mike decided that bickering was probably the best way to clear the air and help them grieve, so he wasn't going to interfere until he had to.
"He knew her for a week at most! And now he's rabbiting on about her as though she was the love of his life!" Ty taking digs and moaning about Anders was par for the course in their family. Even back when they were kids, Anders and Ty were constantly squabbling for their mother's attention. Mike was old enough to know better; that their mother would always love Ty a little bit more than the rest of them. He wasn't old enough to know that it was pointless to keep trying to please his father, though. Not until the bastard took off.
"She may well have been the love of my life, but how am I to know now that the woman is dead?!" Anders snapped back in retaliation. He sighed dejectedly and sank back into the couch.
"Who's dead?" A sixth voice asked. The five men all ceased talking and their heads swivelled towards the direction of the voice. Dawn, Anders' assistant had just entered. She walked into the middle of the office.
"Who died, Anders?" Anders looked glumly at the bottle in his hands as he formulated a lie in his head.
"Helen's sister. Helen, uh – had to go back to Wellington to sort it out. And we also had a massive fight. I don't think she'll be back," Anders answered in a low voice. This was probably the first time that Dawn had seen proper emotion on her boss' face that wasn't jubilation, smugness or just pure arousal (he wasn't one to hide these sorts of things), and it concerned her greatly. She had to admit, she wasn't too sad to see the back of Helen, however. Helen had been a real bitch towards the end of their relationship, and the way she had managed to wrap Anders round her little finger had almost been sickening.
"Oh, no, Anders, I'm so sorry. Is there anything I can do?" It was strange, those four brothers. They seemed to be constantly plagued with romance issues. Mike had been dumped by his wife who ran off with her ex-fiancé, and Axl had been betrothed to a woman who ended up killing herself. Or something. She wasn't entirely sure how the relationship between the two of them had ended; something was foggy in her brain about the facts. God knew what kind of love life their cousin Olaf had.
And she knew bugger-all about Ty's love life, apart from the time he had turned up on her doorstep the first time they met and falsely professed his love for her. Not that she wanted to know anything about his love life, mind you. He seemed to be too much under Anders' thumb, having declared love for her on Anders' instruction. Then again, Anders had virtually everyone under his thumb; he could be damn persuasive at times, and each day she questioned to herself how he did it.
"No, no. You can go home, Dawn, I'm not going to get any work done today," Anders responded. He was still talking without any hint of a joke in his voice, which was rather uncharacteristic. He must really have cared for Helen.
"Oh, come here," she found herself saying, holding out her arms to him. Dawn half-expected Anders to reject her offer, but he stood up and hugged her, burying his head into her shoulder. It was the first real hug that they had shared; Anders had hugged her in the past, but it was generally a brief hug to hide the fact that he wanted her to do something unfavourable. Even more unexpectedly, he made no move to feel her up or undo her bra. She felt something else strange as well.
"Anders, are you crying?" At this, Anders swiftly pulled away from Dawn.
"Okay, thanks Dawn, I'll see you tomorrow!" He swerved her around and ushered her out the door, shutting it behind her. He stayed at the door, not daring to turn around and face his brothers until he knew he was stable. Anders knew that Ty wouldn't care about him crying; he'd be too busy sulking over the fact that Anders still got to hug Dawn instead of him. But there was no way in hell he was going to let Mike know that he was as upset as he was. Selfish prick didn't deserve to see that. Even though he had been very considerate that afternoon, and even put Ty in his place, which made a nice change. Oh, and the fact that Mike risked his life to try and kill the woman that nearly ended his life had to be commended.
This was bullshit, he had only known her for a very short period of time, and here he was getting all upset about her! 'She was pretty spectacular, though,' Anders thought sadly. There were very few women who would ever be up for that much sex at any time.
"You're crying, Anders?" Axl was in disbelief. He didn't think he'd seen his brothers cry much before, if at all – Mike would never allow himself to look vulnerable in front of his younger brothers. Ty didn't tend to cry (although he was close the time that he nearly killed Dawn), he just went bitter and moody when he was upset. Anders? It dawned on Axl that maybe he didn't know his brother as much as he thought he did. Anders always seemed to be either happy or annoyed. This sadness was unfamiliar territory.
"No, I've just got the death of a goddess and a near-death experience in my eye," Anders retorted irritably. He cleared his throat meaningfully and turned around and came back to sit down on the couch. His eyes were red, but you could have attributed that to the scratchiness of Dawn's cardigan.
"Where's the weed at, Grandpa?" And so the self-destruction stage of grief had arrived. Time for Mike to jump in before it all went downhill. "Anders, I understand the desire to get completely shit-faced, but I don't think your office is the best place to do so. Why don't we all go back to the bar and indulge in the illicit activities there," Mike suggested. The last thing he needed was having to deal with stoned, depressed family members jumping into a car and endangering their lives. Best to keep them where he could look after them. As he always did.