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gatheringfiki · 4 years ago

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The following ficlet was written by @marigoldvance based on this photoset.

Pairing: Britchell Rating: T (Anchor ‘verse)

You can also read this story on AO3.

If you’ve enjoyed this story, please leave a comment either in replies or on AO3. :)

—

Anders didn’t know what brought him there.

Blaise Hamlet was dreary and grey, the rustic cottage Anders found himself in possession of older than the country he hailed from. Drafty, creaky, probably held together by woodworm. Dawn would find it charming, he was sure, with its snow-covered lawn and stone-tiled roof. The property – fair for England, Anders guessed – was hemmed by a tall, thick hedgerow, a skinny path snaking from the drive to the front door.

Inside was fully furnished, as stipulated, and decorated for Christmas when he was given the keys, fixtures to fabrics to furniture all in a light, neutral palette.

A woman’s Pinterest creamdream.

Anders’ eyes were sore from it; it didn’t feel airy, as the agent packaged it as. It was disorienting, too fucking bright to keep his eyes open without straining the muscles. He’d become a night owl just to avoid going blind by a gleam of sun off the kitchen counter. Though familiar with late nights and mornings that rolled around in the afternoon, he didn’t appreciate having to upend his whole lifestyle for the sake of battening down and waiting for another sign. Anders functioned better in the daylight. He was human after all.

He swallowed that bitterness with a sip of the scotch nursed.

Regardless, he was reluctant to say he missed Auckland. There were things he missed but, as a whole, he knew he was better putting it behind him.

To be sure, putting it 11 412 miles behind him was a bit much, even by his overambitious standards, and choosing to start fresh in a country famous for its rain and stiff upper lip was so far removed from the sort of change he’d been open to that it had not only shocked everyone he’d told, but it had also confused the shit out of him.

It didn’t take an IQ over 130 to recognize weird, divine intervention when it came bewitching.

He’d been a vessel for fuck sake; god adjacent. He knew what thrall looked like and he’d been under one from the moment the idea manifested to when he stepped through the front door of his new house.

Like it had been with Bragi, the impression of a voice massaged his brain, its cadence nudging his thoughts in directions he would never go of his own volition. It mimicked intuition, the sensation of a gut feeling, every particle charged and aimed at kismet, all it needed was the moving parts to get it there. Who better than a newly vacant vessel recently graduated from his destiny?

Anders doubted it had anything to do with him, figured he was there to intervene somehow in someone else’s journey to save the world like he had been for Axl, considering the only other thing it could possibly be had been wiped from his slate shortly after Bragi put down roots in the back of his skull.

He drained the scotch, icecubes clinking the tip of his nose, and reached for the half-empty bottle sitting beside him on the coffee table. Contents renewed, he settled back into the stuffed couch cushions and held his glass on his chest, pointedly ignoring the back of his hand where it mocked him.

Whatever the reason, it was coming to a head, obvious in the way he moved through the last couple of days in a haze. Akin to the trancelike motions he went through in Norway on his pilgrimage to Yggdrasil, lost and foggy until his feet found the pathway to purpose.

Christ, he was eager to get it over with. While he didn’t want to return to Auckland, he intended to go somewhere with more sun, a beach, bikinis and speedos.

He was done with all the destiny bullshit.

⊹

Anders jolted awake, swam out of a dream into an upright position on the couch where he’d dozed off. His glass rolled off his chest and into his lap, spilling water on his crotch and soaking into the cushion beneath him.

“Fuck!” He jumped up, the glass following and hitting the carpet with a muffled thud.

His hand burned, a brand of pain in an arc across the back of his thumb into the bone of his forefinger. That shouldn’t happen. It couldn’t happen. Of all the impossibilities he’d encountered, that was the one that could not happen because the laws of nature were set in stone. Soapstone, mostly, but things like that were chiseled granite so there was no point in suspending belief.

“Fuck!” Anders cried again, the pain searing from his hand to his heart. He dropped to his knees, tears springing to his eyes, and erupted a sobbing wail into the air just to release some of the pain from his body.

There was an uncomfortable series of tugs and pinches, like dragging a medical needle under the skin, prodding at squirmy veins, beneath the sharper, fuller agony causing his lungs to constrict and throat to close. He screamed and writhed, clutching his hand close to his body, curling in on himself on the floor as he begged the universe for relief.

Long seconds seized the pain into numbness. He couldn’t feel anything, didn’t know if he was breathing, if his heart was beating, if he was alive. The world was spinning, topsy-turvy, and the wind was loud, so loud, a banshee in his ears except he knew the windows and doors were closed, he never opened them, it was too fucking cold and wet in Britain to open a window. Anders wheezed, spots danced in front of his eyes and then, suddenly, a mighty peak of fire, the pain surged and then receded.

The last thing Anders heard was a whip crack and a distant thump.

⊹

The next time Anders waded into consciousness, it was slow, the last fingers of sleep slipped from him in a gentle caress, coaxing him to wakefulness. He groaned and rolled onto his back, rubbed the gum from his eyes before daring to prop up on his elbows. A foreign feeling settled in him, a calmness he’d never experienced purring through every vessel, atom-deep and all encompassing, and the gaping space Bragi had left behind was finally closed, the missing pieces assembled from the ether to make Anders whole again.

There wasn’t time to examine the strangeness of it, however, because a noise split the peace. Anders heaved himself to his feet and trained his ears, the sound plucking a string inside him. Just as he started to reconcile that it was his imagination, it rang out again, strumming his psyche like a harp.

Laughter. Bold and buoyant. And nearby.

“Who the hell—?” Anders padded to the window and pushed back the curtain to peer outside.

He choked and stumbled backwards at the sight that greeted him. Rallying himself, Anders skidded to the door, shrugged on his coat and shoved his feet into his boots, yanking the door open with more force than necessary.

He stomped halfway down the path and then veered into the thick layer of snow that sheeted his front lawn, freezing like a deer in headlights when the trespasser moaned and shifted. Where instinct should be yelling at Anders to book it back inside and call the police, it instead encouraged him to narrow the distance.

The stranger, a tall man with black curls and features sculpted by Michelangelo, groaned again, his eyes squinting then blinking open to stare up at the night sky. He was dressed poorly for the weather, in skin-tight jeans and a thin jacket, though his boots seemed sturdy enough to stomp through slush.

“Excuse me,” Anders said, voice unsteady as the stranger hauled himself up so he was sitting, “But what the fuck?”

The stranger whipped his head around, gaze striking Anders between the ribs. His expression stretched into wonderment, mossy eyes going rounder and red lips parting to reveal slightly crooked teeth. Anders couldn’t move, couldn’t look away, his body refusing to listen to him and guiding him into the stranger’s space. He dropped to his knees in front of the man, wrapped a hand around the man’s bicep to help him to his feet.

They stood at the edge of the snow-angel the stranger’s form left behind, too close to be appropriate for two men who’d never met, a hair’s breadth between the length of their bodies. The stranger shuddered out a breath in a cloud that warmed Anders’ face and then he said:

“It’s you.”

His tone was pitched low and reverent and tinted with an accent.

“What?” Anders replied dumbly.

Without turning his gaze away from Anders’, the stranger brought his hand to cup Anders’ that Anders hadn’t noticed he left on the stranger’s arm. The stranger lifted it to hold between them, his thumb stroking over the back of Anders’ hand, touch soft and tingly spreading warmth up Anders’ arm to the base of his skull. The stranger’s eyes were hooded and hungry, flicking from Anders’ eyes to his mouth.

The stranger turned Anders’ hand to reveal a mark, a name, that, until earlier, had been flaked away like a faded tattoo.

“You can’t be—” Anders choked.

“I’m sorry I took so long.”

Anders was suddenly hyperaware, alert, honed into where the stranger was touching him. There was so much Anders wanted to know – where the fuck did you go? how are you here? – but the words get stuck behind his teeth, all that managed to press free a feeble, “Don’t make a habit of it.”

The stranger – not a stranger, not anymore – threw his head back and laughed, the same sound as before only this time real, echoing back into the past to draw Anders from the house. It was rich and beautiful, and Anders knew he could listen to it every day for the rest of his life without there ever being a chance he could hate it.

“I promise, Anders Johnson, I won’t.” The man said his name as if he’d been waiting forever to do feel the shape of it in his mouth, every vowel and consonant lilted with an adoration reserved for Anchors. An adoration Anders thought had been ripped away from him before he had the chance to learn it.

“Good.” Anders said, tipping against the man, bringing his lips to hover over the man’s own. “You have a lot to make up for John Mitchell.”

“I’ll do my best.”

And, just like that, Anders didn’t give a fuck where in the world he was, so long as his Anchor was with him.

John Mitchell definitely had the legs for a speedo.

#Gathering 12 Days 2020 #Mitchers #Britchell #submission

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