You Can Sink to the Bottom of the Sea (Just don't go without me)
The Almighty Johnsons
Mikkal
Oh, this is going to be fun. I have no idea what I'm doing! Major, Major AU with some followings of Myth canon (what is canon in reference to myth?) and an appearance of John Mitchell because I've discovered it's hard to have Bragi without his vampire and Anders without Mitchell.
"You know what?" Anders shouted. "I'm fucking done with them! All of them!"
Dawn watched her boss tear up his office, tossing papers into boxes and stacking folders on his desk. Every now and then he would pause in his shouting and call someone, usually a client to tell them to fuck off (usually he would literally say "fuck off," but for some reason he was being polite when he cancelled their contract) or someone else to call in a favour. She had no idea what was going on except that his brothers managed to do something drastic, all calls from her to Ty went unanswered.
"Fuck them," he growled. "They want me gone, fine. I hope they're not expecting me at a Thing any time soon."
Suddenly Anders rounded the corner that separated her desk from his office and slapped a piece of paper on her desk. "This is yours," he said, still snappish but a little softer. She always knew he has a soft spot for her, as much of a soft spot a man like him could have. "Letter of recommendation, should get you any job you'd like."
Her jaw dropped as he walked away, kicking the wall as he went by and rummaged through a filled box when he finally made it to his desk. He was serious about this? When he walked in four hours ago telling her he was shutting down JPR she thought he had been kidding. Ever since Anders had been pulled back into his family's life a few months ago he frequently threatened to close down JPR.
Which made no sense because he loved this place, built it from the ground up with blood, sweat, and tears (he would not admit the tears thing to anyone, but Dawn was witness). Glancing down at the paper, though, proved that Anders was completely serious this time. He'd never written a recommendation letter for her any of the other times and the words actually typed out were serious, professional, and surprisingly moving.
"What happened?" Dawn finally asked. The letter was just too much, it was too real.
"Odin fucking banished me, that's what happened," Anders snarled. "Well, banished Bragi, but what's Bragi without Anders? Anders without Bragi? Forget the fact that Mike is constantly not Ullr and we keep trying to convince Ty that he's his own person and that Höðr is not him. Axl is Axl without being Odin all the time. But when it comes to me I'm constantly Bragi, not a drop of Anders left in me since I turned 21. Fuck them," he sneered.
Dawn blinked in shock at the rant. Anders never gave a clue that he felt like this before, always being cocky and covering things up with a smirk and a well placed word. That's when it hit her; he was covering up, using Bragi as a shield against the world. She watched him pace, papers long forgotten. His breathing was fast and shallow, his hands were shaking, and his legs looked seconds from collapsing under him.
This was Anders. This was the boss she started working for years ago. The man who could feel and let the world see his feelings, but then was slowly masked by Bragi when things started to get harder without his family around. Now that she thought about it, though, the Anders she started working for was probably not the Anders he was before Bragi. If what little she knew about the Johnsons family was true, then Bragi became a mask long before Bragi even became Bragi.
Dawn swallowed and tried to call Ty again. He was the closest brother Anders had, perhaps he would know what to do before Anders made this shut down a real thing and left New Zealand for good. She got his voicemail again making her sigh in frustration; she left a desperate message before hanging up and tossing her phone to the side.
She hesitated for a brief second before she entered the office fully, wrapping her arms around Anders and leading him to the couch. His breath hitched and kept hitching, sounding painful to her ears and not at all optimal.
"Breathe, Anders," she said gently, rubbing his shoulder then his back. "Come on, you're going to hyperventilate if you're not careful."
That's when she realizes that Anders is hyperventilating, borderline panic attacking, and if she doesn't get him to breathe deeper then he was going to make himself pass out. She held him closer and brought his head against her chest, breathing deeply and over-the-top. She ran her fingers through his already disheveled hair, heart constricting when Anders didn't even make a crude remark about being so close to her chest. He just clung to her like a child, shoulders shaking like he was trying not to cry.
"Breathe, Anders," she said. "Breathe with me. That's right. Come on." She sighed. "I hate to ask, but if I'm going to talk to your brothers, you have to tell me why they banished you so I have both sides to the story."
Anders groaned. "I slept with Gaia," he whispered. "I had no choice. Bragi and Iðunn, they've been together for thousands of years. We're just two mortals housing powerful Nordic Gods, what did they expect?"
Dawn squeezed her eyes shut tightly. This was…this was just all levels of fucked up. When Ty came into her life and told her about all this god-stuff, she was not expecting any of this. She had a feeling she had a better view about all of this than the gods involved, she was mortal and wasn't brought up in a fucked up family. She was neutral as all get out (minus the fact that she was dating Höðr more-or-less).
"Maybe…" Oh she was going to hate herself for this. "Maybe it would be a good idea for you to leave for a while," she said. She felt Anders stiffen in her embrace. There was the whole possibility that he would hate her after this. "Give yourself a chance to be Anders again, without any of this god-stuff. Let Axl and Gaia work out their Odin and Iðunn deal. Just relax for a while. And this way Bragi and Iðunn are far, far away from each other and this can't happen again."
Anders shook his head. "I can't," he said, his voice muffled. "They need Bragi."
They need Bragi, not Anders. Oh, that hurt.
"Maybe when you come back they'll need Anders too," Dawn replied.
That was the straw that broke the camel's back. Anders pulled away from her, face stoic, and breathing a little bit more even. It took less than three hours for Anders to finish packing his papers up and cancelling the rest of his contracts, now that he stopped ranting and was just dead silent.
The silence was worse than the ranting, Dawn thought. The angry words were normal; a silent, not drinking Anders was rare.
She picked up her letter of recommendation again, reading it over. It was full of words Anders would never speak to her unless he was absolutely and utterly wasted (which has happened twice in all the years she'd known him) and reading it, for some reason, gave her the feeling Bragi was seeping out. Weird considering that she thought Bragi was all about the spoken word.
"Dawn," Anders said quietly, startling her from her thoughts. "Gives these to my brothers, will you? And this one to Gaia." He handed her four envelopes. "It's gay, I know. But I don't think I can face them to tell them. Oh wait, I can't anyway. Banished and all that."
"You're not going to tell them you're leaving face to face?" Dawn asked. "They're your brothers. Family in more ways than one."
He shook his head. "Axl might try to kill me again. Mike will probably punch me in the face. Ty might not do anything, mostly because you keep calling him and leaving voicemails, he'll probably be too worried." He gave her a bitter grin. "No, it's best if they just read the damn letters and leave me alone."
Dawn swallowed thickly, tears stinging her eyes. This was actually happening. "What, you're just going to leave me with a letter? You're not going to pull some strings and get me a new job by tomorrow morning? Some boss you are," she joked weakly.
He chuckled and leaned over to kiss her cheek. "You're amazing," he said. "You probably don't even need that letter, but…" He trailed off mysteriously, giving her a wink. There we go, that was the bright, happy Anders.
Anders was out the door already when her phone rang.
"What's wrong?" Ty demanded, panic in his voice. "Are you okay? What did Anders do?"
A tear ran down her cheek. She wiped it away quickly. Ridiculous, he wasn't going to be gone forever and he was mostly definitely going to call at least her.
"He left," she answered in the steadiest voice possible. "He decided to get away from Gaia so Iðunn and Bragi don't fall into bed again by accident. Not to mention, it's a little hard to be in the same city as your family when you're banished."
"Fuck," Ty muttered. "Fuck. When did he leave? Do you know where he went?"
She shrugged even though he couldn't see her. "I don't know," she half-lied. "I just know he's shut down JPR, wrote me a letter of recommendation (probably did more than that too), and left me letters for you guys and Gaia."
Ty swore again. "I've been trying to get Axl to lift the banishment," he said. "But he's so pissed about Gaia. Olaf keeps telling him it wasn't completely Anders fault, that it was Bragi, but Axl won't listen."
"What's Mike doing?"
He sighed. "Trying to keep Axl from hunting Anders down and killing him."
Dawn winced. "Yeah, Anders mentioned something about that." She tucked her phone between her ear and shoulder as she started placing things carefully in an empty box Anders left behind. "Do you want to read the letter now or later?"
"I'm gonna some over now," he said. "You're at JPR, right? Jesus," he muttered. "How'd he close down so fast? You know what, don't answer that. I'll be there in a bit."
"He's probably been planning this for a while," Dawn commented before Ty hung up. "After Helen he was really torn up. I think he really loved her."
"You mean Bragi loved Iðunn?"
"No, Anders loved Helen. You should've heard him talk about her." Dawn shook her head. "If you're going to be here soon, you can give me a ride."
"Will do," Ty said. "I still can't—I'll be there soon. Hold on. Love you."
She smiled. "Love you, too."
Dawn hung up and sat heavily down on the couch; four letters in hand, names written on the front ranging from a steady hand to a messy scrawl that Dawn could only recognize as Ty's name because it was the shortest one. She desperately wanted to know what was on them, but held off from flicking open the unsealed flaps.
The only thing she hoped now was that Anders would keep in touch, not even expecting him to return—especially not any time soon.