It was hard to keep track of time (and the amount of alcohol they were consuming), and the afternoon just seemed to carry on until Michele returned to the bar to find four of the five Johnson family members absolutely trollied, surrounded in a haze of different kinds of smoke; not all of them legal, she suspected.
"Come to terms with everything, have you all?" She couldn't believe their state. Mike's brothers and Olaf looked to be even worse off emotionally from when they started drinking.
"You're just as tall as Helen," Anders told her. The four of them were sitting in a booth, and Anders looked like he could barely sit upright.
"Man, if I knew that the last time I shagged her would be the last, I might not have ever pulled out," he lamented, shaking his head and banging his hand on the table for emphasis. Anders looked as though he was seriously considering banging his head on the table, too; his face was in a definitive pout. Ty swung dopily to his brother.
"You are truly the most revolting person I know," Ty said sincerely. Anders clapped a hand on Ty's shoulder.
"Thanks, bro. That means a lot coming from you. I really appreciate it," he acknowledged, barely managing to get his sentences from his mouth. There was a 'thunk!' as Olaf passed out on the table.
"Anytime, mate, I really meant it. You need me to tell you what's what? I'm your guy," Ty replied, clapping his own hand on Anders' shoulder and giving it a friendly shake. Anders let out a laugh.
"Look at us with our hands on each others' shoulders. We're officially halfway to gay now."
"I'm not gay, you are," Ty retorted, but he either couldn't or wouldn't remove his hand from his brother's shoulder.
"It's fun telling girls that you're gay, though. I do it all the time," Anders bragged. Not even alcohol could stop Anders from his favourite hobby – winding up Ty.
"I know, you told the love of my life that I was gay," Ty slurred in response.
"Why do you even love her so much?" While this heart-warming conversation was taking place, Mike was just sitting staring very intently at the beer bottle he was nursing in his hands. His blue eyes were largely unfocused, and he didn't seem to notice that Michele had returned.
"I love her because she's beautiful, and smart, and pretty, and she makes me laugh, and she's intelligent, and she's hot, and because I love her," Ty rattled off a list of qualities that he valued about Dawn.
"See, I already knew most of those things about her. Does that mean I love her?" Michele didn't know this Dawn woman, but she relished the idea of recording Anders' and Ty's conversation to show Dawn.
"I don't know, are you sexually attracted to her? Because sometimes that's a good clue." Ty informed his brother. For all the sex Anders had, he really could be clueless about women. Hell, he was clueless about himself, having virutally no self-awareness of what an asshole he was.
Michele rolled her eyes. This was a pathetic sight to see. These almighty gods, completely tanked by a few glasses of alcohol. She thought it was cute how they thought they understood women, but it was also rather saddening. Sighing, she went over to the bar and poured herself a glass of wine. If she was going to have to wait for this to die down, she was at least going to enjoy herself. Michele figured that the way Anders and Ty were going, there was half an hour max before they went the same way as Olaf.
"If I'm being completely honest with you Tyrone, sometimes I am, yes. Especially when she's angry."
"Well, that's how you know you're not in love with her. Because if you love her, then you'd be turned on when she's happy, not when she's angry."
"But but I could still be in love with her," Anders insisted.
"You can't be in love with her because I'm in love with her," Ty protested. Fucking Anders, he was ALWAYS stealing his stuff. "And you can't fall in love with your employee, that's just unethical," he added. So there!
"It's my business, so I can decide if I want to be unethical if I like," Anders said, finally dropping his hand from his brother's shoulder.
"Can't you be nice to me for once?" Ty moaned, dropping his forehead to the table.
"I tell ya what," Anders said, swinging a finger in his brother's direction.
"If I ever sleep with Dawn, I'll let you have a threesome with us. Do we have a deal?" There was a pause. Struggling, Ty lifted his head to squint disapprovingly at his brother.
He shook his head vehemently with disgust, and then slowed his head and switched to a fervent nod.
"That. Means maybe," Ty told his brother. Michele let out a scoff from behind her wine glass and the two alert brothers shifted their attention to her.
"Oh, hi there. Don't let me get in the way of your incestuous fantasies," she snorted. She lifted her head to look at the man she actually cared for.
"Mike!" she called. He inhaled suddenly, blinked and looked up, seeming surprisingly sober for how much alcohol he had consumed.
"Oh, shit. What's the time?"
"Time to send your brothers home. They seem to have drowned their sorrows enough." Michele answered, slipping off her stool and approaching the table slowly and deliberately.
"Where's everyone else?" Mike asked, struggling to get out of his seat.
"They've all gone home. Even the new goddess. She's gone back to her flat."
Anders brightened at this prospect; he could go home without worrying about making morally ambiguous decisions.
"Ty, looks like we're being kicked out. Let's go and grab Axl and party somewhere else than this depressing shithole," he suggested, swaying in his seat.
"We don't even know where Axl is," Ty pointed out, swaying just as much. He gripped Anders' shoulder to steady himself, but that was fruitless; the pair of them nearly toppled over.
"You two are in no state to go anywhere," Mike lectured. He was met by two sets of bloodshot glares.
"Mikael, I am a grown man. I will go wherever I like, and where I like is back to my home. And I am taking my brother Ty with me," Anders announced. The pair of them had really grown a lot closer since Ty had lost his god powers. Mike initially thought this was a good thing, but he was starting to think that he preferred them when they hated each other.
"Do I have to?" Ty whined; it was as though they were children again.
"Ty, you are depressed and gloomy and vulnerable-" That last word was a test of Anders' drunken tongue "-and I need to make sure that in this state you do not do something stupid like call Dawn."
"And how do you think you plan on getting there? No taxi is going to take the both of you in this state, and you sure as fuck aren't driving home." For Mike, there was nothing as sobering as having to take care of his dipshit brothers. He was officially done looking after them for the day.
"Easy! I'll call Dawn and have her pick us up," Anders said, pulling his phone from his pocket. Michele let out a condescending laugh, shaking her head.
"I'm going upstairs. Mike, you better be up soon," she warned seductively.
"How come you get to call Dawn and I don't?" Ty wanted to know.
"Because I am her boss and I can call her when I like." Dawn had picked up on the other end.
"Dawn! Can you come pick us up please. Me and my brother Ty."
"…Okay, where are you?" Dawn sighed. Normally, she would have rejected his request purely to give the Anders the impression that she had a busy social life, but it sounded like Anders was beyond caring.
"At the bar."
"Which bar, Anders, there are several hundred bars in Auckland!"
"My brother's bar. Emily Place. Like your mum's name."
"Her mum's name is Mary," Ty hissed loudly at the same time Dawn automatically corrected her boss with "My mum's name is not Emily, it's Mary. Wait. Was that Ty? How does he know my mum's name?"
"Oh I don't know, Dawn, maybe he slept with her. I'm not my brother's keeper."
"I didn't sleep with her! I didn't sleep with her, Dawn," Ty tried to shout down Anders' cell phone. Anders pulled his phone away from his face.
"You went to Waikato University. Putaruru is in the Waikato. How do we know you didn't sleep with her?"
"I didn't sleep with her!" Anders and Ty were obviously completely sloshed. They started bickering at each other, momentarily forgetting that Dawn was still there on the other line.
"Anders. ANDERS!" Dawn shouted, and Anders went back to the phone.
"Yes, Dawn, deary, how can I help you?"
"Stay there. I'll come pick you two up. Good God."
"Ahhh, thanks Dawn, you're a goddess," Anders said gratefully before hanging up.
"Wouldn't it be bloody ridiculous if she was actually a goddess?" The depressing thoughts seemed to cascade upon Ty when he was drunk.
"She's over 21. We'd know if she was a goddess by now." This time it was Mike who answered. Olaf let out a loud snore that echoed through the bar. Ty moodily put his head down on the table and didn't lift it until Anders was shaking him.
"Dawn's here, let's go." Ty had fallen asleep for about half an hour; he felt more sober, only he now had a massive headache to accompany it.
"Oh, fuck," he muttered, lifting his head with a wince.
"If either of you throw up in my car, I will expect a new car and a raise," Dawn threatened her boss and his brother.
"Deal," Anders agreed, and the three of them stumbled out to Dawn's car. Anders and Ty collapsed into the backseat without any regard to backseat seating etiquette, nor seatbelts.
"Alright. Ty, where do you live?"
"No no no Dawn, we're going back to my place."
"Well, that makes my life easier, I can make sure both of you don't try to kill yourselves in one place." Dawn said sarcastically. This break-up seemed to bit hitting Anders pretty damn hard. But she had no idea why that gave his brother the liberty to hit the bottle so hard as well. Perhaps it was a Hawke's Bay thing.
"You're going to feel rough tomorrow," Dawn said, glancing in the rearview mirror as she pulled out of the parallel car park on the street.
"I feel rough now, so why should that stop me from drinking?" Anders mumbled into the seat that his face was pressed up against.
"And I won't be coming into work tomorrow." Dawn screwed up her face in annoyance. Anders always did this. Bailing on her, usually leaving her instructions and ridiculous requests to do on her own.
"So there won't be much point in you going in, either." What? Giving her the day off? Something was seriously wrong with Anders. She braved another glance in the backseat. Her eyes met Ty's, and the pair of them hastily looked away. He seemed a lot more sober than he had seemed when she heard him over the phone. In addition, he had actually shifted into normal seating procedure for a fast-moving vehicle; he had even put his belt on.
Dawn gave a little smile when she realised that he had also put the belt on his brother, which couldn't have been easy given Anders' position of being half sprawled across the backseat. Maybe she had been wrong to judge Ty.
"You're still paying, me right?" Her question was met with a low groan from the backseat.
"I think that means, yes absolutely, with overtime and an extra day off," Ty said deviously.
"Hah. If I tell him that he said that, will you act as my witness?" Dawn asked dryly. Ty grinned in spite of his headache.
"Absolutely."
"Are you talking about me?" Anders could sense when people were talking about him normally, but his senses were off in this state of inebriation.
"Ty was just giving me directions to your house," Dawn answered smoothly.
"Oh." Clearly Anders wasn't sober enough to remember that she had actually been to his house multiple times.
"He isn't normally like this when he's drunk," Dawn observed in a low voice. Ty looked over at his older brother.
"Well, I think it's a combination of his utter heartbreak and the fact that Mike was shovelling whiskey down our throats rather than Anders' favourites of wine and vodka." Dawn nodded appreciatively.
"I think the absinthe, pills, marijuana and cigarettes may have had something to do with it as well," Ty listed. Dawn swerved in shock and the car violently lurched for a few seconds.
"Oh, my God! How is he not convulsing on the floor, or in a coma?!"
"My brother is a bit of an enigma when it comes to illicit substances; no-one quite knows how he works," Ty mused, casting a gaze out the window.
"Well, I'm glad he called me. It would have been a disaster if he had planned on driving home in this state. And how are you not much, much worse off?"
"I just stuck to the alcohol; I'm getting out of a bit of a detox, so the whiskey was enough for me. Anything else probably would have killed me," Ty lied a little sadly. Dawn had no memory of the many dates they had had where they had tried all sorts of exciting and different wines (and also some… interesting experimental wines; New Zealand had a very diverse viticulture). Ty had still been dealing with the strong effect that alcohol had on him now that Hod had left his body.
"Oh," Dawn sounded surprised, "What kind of detox?"
"Oh, I just tried giving up coffee and alcohol for a bit, just to see if there was any noticeable difference to my health. And I'm not fond of the drug scene. I'm not exactly the radical type." If Ty had to reinvent himself for Dawn, he thought he may as well keep quiet the period of his life where he was married and frequently indulged in questionable substances with his now late wife.
"And did it work?"
"Uhh, some? But then it became too much of a drag. My brothers were having none of it."
"You mean Anders was having none of it," corrected Dawn.
"Well, the others as well. Mike owns a bar, for God's sake, and Axl is 22 so he doesn't know what the word sober means. And don't even get me started on our cousin Olaf," Ty said a little bitterly.
"Sounds like you're the only sane one," Dawn remarked. This evoked a smile from Ty.
"You might be right," he said, looking at her in the mirror. She looked back at him, and returned his smile. She was really finding it difficult to find him creepy and strange. Anders HAD assured her that he was a good guy, but she was generally inclined to distrust his suggestions. Some of the time. Other times, his strange logic seemed to make perfect sense.