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Anders Johnson, as his family so pointedly decided one day without his consent, was born to be a disappointment.
Maybe it was the way he came home late, alcohol on his breath. Maybe it was getting caught with his fingers up a skirt.
Not everyone viewed him that way, there was Ty. Ty who looked at Anders and thought, he could swallow the world whole and spit it out and he doesn’t even have any idea.
He’s sixteen when he rides the bad side of a chemical high for the first time.
“Why would you do something so stupid?” Mike is fuming, spitting harsh words.
Because I heard that if you take enough, if you find the right formula, you can see colors for a moment. For a fraction in time the world lights up and you get to see that spark.
“To piss you off.” Tumbles past Anders lips.
He can’t say he’s only a child and he already believes that he’ll never see the world as it should be.
When he turns twenty-one Bragi enters his mind, works his way in and settles there. Anders thinks it’s the worst thing that's ever happened to him.
The other gods don’t speak colors to their vessels, they don’t have the fucking god of poetry rattling around inside their head making sonnets out of things that Anders has never seen. It’s enough to drive him to alcohol, to the burn of vodka down his throat just to get Bragi to shut up.
“Why fish?”
Anders stands in his kitchen with Ty, looking between the tank and him.
“Because they don’t require a lot of maintenance and I’m never home.”
The woman at the fish store was colored, she had met her soulmate and was filled with vibrants. She worked at this particular tropical fish store because she said every day it reminded her that her life was filled with so much bright. She pointed at the fish and explained the colors to Anders, each one that the fish held. She explained the blue of the water and he felt Bragi relaxing, coming to a low hum in his mind.
Bragi tells Anders about his brothers, about the colors they represent. He tells him that Mike is a deep strong green, the kind that fills forests, that kind that represents tall standing trees. He tells him that his baby brother Axl is a fiery red, quick to anger and burning bright enough that he’s hard to put out. He tells him that Ty is an icey brilliant blue, cut of stone and cold to the touch.
He tells him all of these things and Anders thinks if anyone deserves to have color then it’s him for having to listen to this constant stream of bullshit.
Mitchell spends over a century in grey, in hues of it. He is told that blood is red, crimson, scarlet. That it comes in different shades and not everyone's is the same. He tears flesh, lets his teeth sink into it and hopes, hopes, hopes that he will see these shades when he pulls back, that color will flood him and he’ll finally know the monster that he is.
Ty searches for it, spends his days trying to find it. He thinks that maybe if he knows color then all of this will be bearable, that the cold that courses through him will have a new purpose.
Anders is searching too, just not in a way that anyone thinks. He puts people between his bedsheets and tries not to give himself too much hope.
Mitchell doesn’t know what he ever expected out of life but he’s starting to think that vampires don’t get to be colored. Everyone he has ever known that has seen colors was because they had colors before they were turned.
“Maybe it’s just not meant for my kind.”
Annie tells him that he looks awful in yellow but really that he looks awful in most things that he owns. He blames it on lack of color but they all know the truth, Mitchell just has a really poor taste in fashion.
He leaves, he runs, disappears. He thinks that he’s better at being a ghost than any ghost he’s ever met.
Maybe I should have been a ghost instead.
Mitchell spends so long without color, so long with his mind focused on it that his hands forgot how to hold. They forgot how to grip a coffee cup, how to hold a book, how to turn the pages. How to lace themselves together in another’s. His hands forgot their steadiness until they only shook.
Anders is nothing but trouble, Mitchell thinks there should be a picture of him in the dictionary next to the word. Maybe he should send Anders’ fucking picture into Webster's. No, that would make the bastard too happy.
He lets Anders talk him into bed, ok it doesn’t take much convincing.
New Zealand was supposed to be a fresh start, somewhere where he could be kinder, more human. But when Anders walks up to him, all clean cut and plush lips he wants to listen.
A small piece of Anders thinks that if anyone is gonna give him color it should be this guy, he wants to know what colors he can associate to his accent, to the drawl of his vowels. He thinks that he wouldn’t mind it so much with him.
That’s a lie. Anders hates everything, and everyone, and especially sharing his space. Which seems to have been taken over by long limbs and what he assumes to be ugly colored flannel shirts.
“I barely know you,” Anders tries to say one day but the fight in him is barely even a fight and more so a statement.
“You haven’t tried to kick me out yet.”
“I have, I tell you to get the fuck out every day and you always seem to be here when I get home.”
“Yeah, but those aren’t real complaints.” Mitchell uses his hands for emphasis.
“Oh really?” Anders crosses his arms and leans back against the counter to watch Mitchell talk his way out of this.
If Anders thought that he was good at talking then Mitchell at least deserves some recognition for the bullshit he manages to spew.
Eventually Mitchell gives up, undoes the button on Anders pants and slides his hard cock into his mouth and Anders thinks that yeah maybe this set up is ok.
If Anders comes across as harsh, as cruel, it’s not because he doesn’t care. He does, he does, he does. It’s because there is a chorus in the back of his mind telling him the color of the sky and how he will never see it.
“We’re not dating.”
“You’re practically living together.” Ty says with a smile on his face. “I happen to really like him, he’s a lot more fun than you.”
“Fun? I happen to know how to have a good fucking time.”
“You’re version of fun is getting so obliterated that you don’t even know your own name.”
Anders pauses, he knows everything there is to know about himself. He understands all of his actions and knows that if he puts a line up his nose it is because it creates silence, it stops the constant stream in his head of, colors aren’t for you, this life isn’t for you.
Mitchell? He helps him forget, he manages to shut Bragi the fuck up for a brief moment in time that isn’t Anders chasing some equation compounded down into powder that he can put into his system.
“I’ve lived over a hundred years, I just don’t think that vampires can get it.” It makes Mitchell easy to be around, there’s no pressure to worry about if one day he will open his eyes and finally see.
“I was always told Ireland was the greenest place on this whole earth. Back before I turned I had always hoped that I would get to see it, see what everyone was talking about.”
“Will you go when you get color?”
Mitchell thinks about it, runs his hands across his thighs and down to his knees before standing up. “No, there’s plenty of green here.”
Anders doesn’t realize, doesn’t make the connection that Mitchell has seen the lime leaves of the hibiscus, the red petals on the flower that blooms from it. He doesn’t realize that when Mitchell looks into his eyes he sees endless blue, the same color of the waves that crash against the shore, that carry grains of sand into their depths.
And he said, “something great, something terrifying,”
Which was followed by “something beautiful,”
He can't really focus when Bragi is whispering in his ear to take, to claim Mitchell.
Anders drinks the darkness again, swallows it down until he’s collapsing, until he's expanding, exploding, supernova.
He may not be able to see color but Mitchell makes him feel.
His adam’s apple bobs, moves with nervousness as he chokes down words. He doesn’t know how to tell Anders that his hair is golden, how it shines in the sun. That the stubble in his beard has shades of red in it. God, red, a color that has been haunting Mitchell his whole fucking love. He never thought that it would be beautiful, he thought if anything he would be afraid of it. He wants more, he wants to see all of the colors. He wants Anders to see them as well.
He thinks of the trees on the south island, the ones that are wind blown and bent back. He thinks of their resilience, how that even against the harsh weather they still grow.
Mitchell becomes a nervous wreck.
“Why do you jump every time I come into the room like you aren’t expecting it? I do live here you know, this is my apartment.” Anders sets his keys on the countertop as he takes off his suit jacket.
“Too much coffee, haven’t slept yet, had a long shift at the hospital.” Mitchell drums his fingers against the countertop as he watches Anders’ eyes.
He wants to shout blue, to tell him that if he wears blue it will bring out the color of his eyes even more.
“If you see color it means that you’ve found your soulmate, isn’t that why you want it?”
“Maybe when you met your goddess-”
“No. I refuse to believe that the reason I will ever see color is because of fucking Bragi.”
No, if he sees color it will be for him, not for the god inhabiting him.
“Besides, you have Dawn, she’s not a goddess and you got your color.”
Who would have thought that Ty would be the one to give him hope.
He lets the idea of Mitchell knock around in his head, lets its spin and tear down the foundations of him until he's at war with himself.
He walks into his brother’s bar and he looks so much like exhaustion. He reaches over the counter and pulls a bottle, he doesn’t look at the label. He pops off the lid and flips off Mike all in one go.
Mike doesn’t say anything, not this time, not with the way that Anders’ shoulders are slouched, how the curve of his spine is more hunched.
Anders tips his head back and takes a swig. He pauses, bottle in his hands. He sees something out of the corner of his eye. The stained glass window of the bar flickers. The grey leaves it. It springs to life, technicolor and beautiful.
Anders sets the bottle down, walks over to the window, to the sunlight streaming in. He puts his hand up to the pieces, to the triangular shapes and how the mold together. He doesn’t know what colors they are but he knows that it's not grey.
“Anders, what the fuck are you doing?” Mike asks as he wipes down a glass and puts it on the glass rack.
“What color is this?” Anders asks, pointing to a piece of glass on the left side of the window.
“Red.” Mike replies instantly.
Red.
Red.
Red.
Maybemaybemaybe (impossible, impossible, impossible, don’t go there).
Anders runs, leaves Mike's bar, leaves the stained glass window and pulls with him hope.
He rushes home, on his way to his car he sees a butterfly fluttering around a bush.
And he swears that his hammering heart matches these butterfly wings. He thinks the wings must be yellow, that they must be bright. He remembers someone telling him that most butterflies came in that color, a yellowish-orange. How could you mix two colors together? That one there is called a monarch and one day you will see the way its colors blend together.
He thinks about Mitchell, wonders what color his eyes must be. They don’t look like everyone else's, they don’t hold the same dull gray tones. He tries not to to think about Mitchell, Mitchell and his wild hair and eyes that crinkle at the sides. No, he doesn’t want to think about him because there is no point investing in something that won't give you color, but it has to be him.
Or maybe it was the glass of vodka that finally did him in. He fights with himself on the way home, tries to rationalize the stained glass window and why it is the only color he can see.
Sometimes it isn’t instant, sometimes it takes the heart a bit longer to catch up.
He slams the door shut, looks over to his fish tank and sees that his world is still in shades of grey.
“Mitchell!” Anders shouts through the apartment.
Mitchell comes out of the bedroom, jeans low around his hips and without a shirt on. “What? Is this about the cup that I broke because I swear-”
He doesn’t have time to finish his sentence before Anders has him pushed back against the wall, before his hands are making their way to Mitchell’’s jeans and undoing the button. He knows what to do when Anders is like this, it happens from time to time, the need for him to be devoured and that’s exactly what Mitchell will do.
It’s not how he thought it would happen.
He didn’t think it would be from teeth in his neck and a cock up his ass and cum shooting out of him. He does think that it is all rather how it should have played out.
Actually, it’s exactly how he thought it would happen.
Color bleeds into him.
He sits in Mitchell’s lap, his legs wrapped around him as they sit on the edge of the bed. He sees Mitchell’s eyes fade from black, to brown, flecked with hazel. He sees the blood around Mitchell’s mouth and thinks that this is the color red and how he has waited a whole lifetime to see it.
“How long, how long have you had your colors?” Anders asks, his voice quiet as he leans into Mitchell, as his lips press against his neck.
“A few weeks.” Mitchell replies back quietly.
“You fucking prick, you couldn’t have told me?”
“Why? So you would have pushed me away and ran?”
Anders thinks about it and yeah maybe he would have done that.
“Do you-”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Just now.”
Mitchell laughs, his body vibrates with his and Anders snakes his arms around Mitchell tighter, lightly bites the side of his neck.
Bragi is even worse at times, Anders never knows what sort of day he is going to have with him. Lavender and golden fields, irises that look like moons scream at him until he’s begging for Mitchell to make it quiet, and he does, he always does. He silences him until the only he hears is Mitchell’s soft words.
“Blue. It belongs to you as well. So does gold. A lot of colors belong to you. Don’t let Bragi take them from you.”
And he doesn’t, not with Mitchell by his side.
Ty was right, right about Anders being able to swallow the world whole. He’s a bit different now that he has color, stronger, not as closed off.
“More full of shit,” Mike would be the one to say.
There’s lightning in his mouth, red that courses through his veins and the name John always on the tip of his tongue.