Chapter Text
Nestled between the Law Offices of one B. L. Tarch and the perpetually-closed Geranium Germinated Wheat Bakery, there sits a modest little Tavern by the name of DeGroot Keep. One wouldn’t be blamed in mistaking the Keep for…anything else really; the structure is made from a homey, tan stone that gives it the air of a snug residential building (and indeed, its proprietor does live in the room above the tavern, but we’ll get to him later.) Fresh green paint trims the windows and roof, never a flake nor chip as a point of pride. Although the tavern’s name hangs above a pair of heavy wooden doors just off the street, this sign is only a formality, as the true entrance to DeGroot Keep (as transcribed by its sole employee on a borrowed flashcard and taped to the door) is procured from the eastern side, down the hall to the right. This esca of a front door can’t be breached even if one tries; within, the Keep’s largest and most impressive wooden table blocks the entirety of it, crouching like a curmudgeonly boulder. Nicknamed the Elephant, (both for its girth and the fact that sixteen dancing elephants are carved into legs), the monstrosity can only be moved by four fairly-fit adults working in coordination, which is a big ask for the patrons of the Keep, so there the Elephant sits. This is actually one of the least egregious examples of the business’s fire and safety hazards.
To truly access this strange example of an alcoholic establishment, one must pass through the repurposed gap-between-buildings, underneath the pergola, and betwixt two stone sea-serpents if they judge you worthy. The spot of shaded greenery one finds there is something to marvel at, though few do. During the day it is shaded, and as the sun goes down, hanging lights guide potential customers to the actual front door.
This is the journey of one truly haggard prospective patron, newly jet-lagged and irate from the front door’s runaround, grumbling to himself with a distinct Australian accent as he pushes inside. Tavish, as well as the handful of early customers hunkered in their normal pods, look up at the bell’s ring.
“Aye there!” greets the bartender, as genial as they come, slipping into the smile he reserves for courting the uninitiated to his place of business. “Welcome to DeGroot Keep! What can I get for you, stranger?”
The newcomer startles. Hearing a thick Scottish accent in the deep reaches of the southern United States usually does that—in Tavish’s experience—so he’s just glad that the man’s forgotten to be sour-faced for a second. It’s not so odd that it distracts him for more than a moment, though, and he drifts closer to the bar. “Beer.”
“Coming right up!”
Tavish moves automatically, bottles sliding behind the bar with a practiced ease, acting on hunch as sizes up the man before him. He’s not paying attention to the bartender's hands, instead finally getting hit with the sheer unorthodoxy of the tavern’s décor, the Elephant not the least of it. This is perfectly fine for Tavish, who begins the process of rimming a glass tumbler.
“Flight just get in?” he fields, as his customer gazes around in bafflement.
“…Yeah.” The man’s frown—before with an air of perpetual irritation that was more aimed at the general world rather than Tavish in particular—grows slightly suspicious. It tugs him enough out of his beguilement. “How’d you know that?”
“Just a guess.” Tavish shrugs. “You can wear the sunglasses indoors all you like lad, but it wouldn’t hide those bags unless you had a bag o’re your head.”
There is a moment, a moment where Tavish tenses, knowing that not everyone would take brusque ribbing from a stranger with anything more than offense, but then the stranger fully processes what’s been said. He laughs. It’s an abrupt little thing, more of a bark really, but the tension between them breaks, and the Australian sits down.
“Your drink, sir,” Tavish says as he slides it towards him.
“…This isn’t a beer.”
“ ‘S the same price.” A half grin curls up mischievously. “Humor me.”
The man, now sitting at one of the vinyl-clad bar stools patterned to resemble a vintage bottle cap, takes a hold of the mixed drink and knocks it back. After a second, he sets it down, licking the corner of his mouth.
“Bloody hell,” he says. “That’s a damn good drink, mate.”
The hunch, now confirmed, eases back into the twinkle of Tavish’s eye. “Well they don’t call me the greatest bartender between the 106th and 107th longitudes for nothing! I do my best.”
Snorting, the man says, “Mick Mundy.”
“Tavish DeGroot,” Tavish replies, taking the offered hand.
“DeGroot,” Mick hums. “As in DeGroot Keep, then?”
“No actually, complete coincidence. Bought the place from a woman named Dee Gertrude Roots, her pride and joy it was, founded it in the 70s as a swinger’s club. Anyway, terrible thing happened to the ‘ole girl: ‘twas the day of her retirement, and right as she hands me the keys, that there moose-shoe hanging above the door comes free ‘o its nail. Dropped on her noggin, and killed dead right there.”
Mick turns to stare at the comically large horseshoe christening the Keep’s doorway, before glancing skeptically at Tavish. “You’re fucking with me.”
“ ‘Course I’m fucking with you. ‘As in DeGroot Keep?’ Bah, what sort of half-brained question is that?” But Tavish says it with such teasing humor that Mick can’t help but laugh too. Tavish’s starting to like this man, now that he’s getting a good feel for his ins-and-outs.
Gesturing with his half-finished drink, Mick admits, “DeGroot or Roots, you’ve got a real weird bar on your hands.”
“Tavern,” Tavish corrects seriously. When Mick raises an eyebrow, he blisters, “ach, you’re as bad as the Americans, can’t tell a bar from a pub, let alone a proper tavern when you see one.”
“Don’t let him start draw ‘n quartering you for that,” a voice speaks up from beyond Mick and Tavish’s conversation. “Trust me, ain’t no one in the world makes the distinction but him.”
The three men near the door, whose exchange Tavish has been listening to with half an ear, have noticed that Mick has settled into an amicable conversation, the fact that it’s gone on reasonably long marking him as ‘the alright sort’. The regulars around here know better than to crowd any new faces, lest their enthusiasm chase them off. Tavish has a business to run, after all.
“And that’s what’s wrong with your bloody country,” Tavish points at the interrupter. “No one cares but me! When the day comes you’ll all slide into the ocean, except for I and the Keep, the only ones who bothered to remember that words mean things.”
Ignoring him, Dell speaks right on past to Mick. “Bet he told you he was the best bartender in the county too,” the customer-swiping bastard says, elbowing Mick in the side. “He mention he only won that competition because the other contestant had even fewer eyes than him?”
“You just have to ruin everything for me, don’t you Conagher?” Tavish asks, and Dell laughs.
They quickly round-table the introductions, Dell the only one to reach out and shake Mick’s hand. Mikail stoutly offers his name before retreating back into silence, but when it comes to Dr. Ludwig’s turn, he states abruptly, “and I am a free man!”
Mick falters, but to his credit, it’s only momentarily. “Congratulations? Got ‘ta say though, you got balls mate. Most people don’t offer up when they’ve just been out of prison.”
“Prison?” Ludwig says, eyes immediately narrowing behind his spectacles, snapping into suspicion in an instant. “Who told you about that? I want names!”
“I uh,” Mick says, obviously taken aback. Thankfully, Dell always has his thumb on the pulse of whenever something farcical is about to go on.
“What Doc means to say,” he assuages, “is that he’s been freed from the institution of marriage, not the institution of…institutionalization.”
Ludwig’s mood is gone as quickly as it’d come. “Ah ha ha, yes. Silly misunderstanding. Excuse my slip of the tongue.”
Still looking like he’s been swiped at by a wild animal, Mick cautiously says, “…roight.”
“But yes, the papers came in this morning! As of today, I am a free man.”
He proves this by spreading out said papers across the booth’s table, and reciting in glee the legal severances which he had been granted over a multitude of affidavits and certifications. Tavish, having the misfortune of not being able to move from his post, knows Ludwig’s been doing this for the past hour and a half. Mikhail and Dell have shown him saintly support however, the later patting him on the shoulder as he launches into another gleeful discussion of alimony. They’ve retracted back into their corner, for which Mick is grateful.
“Eclectic lot you got,” he tells Tavish. “Setup to a joke, isn’t it? A German, a Russian, and American walk into a Scotsman’s bar.”
“Tavern,” Tavish says. “And you haven’t seen the half of it. Wait until you meet-”
The bell tinkles, heralding the arrival of Tavish’s only employee and their begrudging chauffeur.
“You’re late,” he tells Pyro.
The bout of muffled, frustrated yelling he gets in response is directed at Jeremy, who puts his hands up in defense. Pyro points at their roommate furiously, laying the truth bare.
Tavish raises a brow at the sputtering man. “You slowed down just so you could stare at the track team’s arses?”
“It’s a student crossing zone!” Jeremy caterwauls with the trod upon hallmarks of an argument carried all the way from campus to the bar. “I had to slow down. And, y’know, maybe while we were stopped I looked, but I was-”
Pyro throws their hands up in exasperation and walks behind the bar.
Mick, meanwhile, has been gazing at Pyro nonstop since they stepped in the door. Tavish doesn’t blame him. It’s not every day you see someone in a fully flame-retardant suit tie on an apron and then put a little chef’s hat on their head.
“Jaw off the floor, lad,” he says to Mick, not unkindly.
Realizing he’s staring, the Australian self-consciously follows the command. “…Sorry.”
“ ‘S alright. They get that a lot.”
The person in question doesn’t even notice the conversation has fallen on them, shuffling to the back kitchen in preparation of the upcoming dinner rush.
“…They wear that all the time then?”
“Yeah,” Jeremy says, swinging into the stool on Mick’s right. “It’s cool though. Believe it or not, Pyro’s not even the 4th weirdest person at TFU.” Jeremy pauses, as though just registering who he’s talking to. “Who are you, anyway?”
“Scout, be nice,” Tavish warns.
“What? I am being nice! I’m asking who this chucklenut is, ain’t I?”
“Mundy,” Mick growls, already deciding he’s not going to like this kid.
“And I’m Jeremy, but everyone calls me Scout, so there, now we’re all acquainted and shit.”
“They call you Scout?” Mick asks dubiously. “Why?”
“Uh, ‘cause it’s my name, duh.”
“What kind of name is Scout?”
“What kind of name is Mundy?”
Tavish, feeling that occupying the new guest is handled for a little while, (assuming Jeremy doesn’t annoy him to death), gracefully withdraws from the conversation in the horizontal direction—sliding down the bar to where his second most care-intensive client is.
“Lassie,” he says, gently jostling her shoulder, “it’s 5:19.”
“Urg,” Pauling says, lifting from the gentle cushion of her folded arms and into the buzzing light of the Keep, illuminated as it is by the faux-stained glass filtering down from the ceiling. Her cats-eye glasses are ever so slightly out of place, much like the stray hairs popping up from her bun as though they too have just been woken from a nap.
Another bartender might be concerned to find a woman passed out on his bar after only one gin and tonic, but Tavish knows that this particular woman is only held together by stress and paperclips. Before she’d come through Keep’s doors, she’d been going on thirty hours without sleep. It was no wonder that she’d walked in, taken her usual, and then immediately slumped over in her favorite chair.
“Wuzz…” she grumbles, then shoots up like a jack-in-the-box. “5:19? I told you to wake me up at 5:14!”
“I know, but you were just so exhausted looking, I thought you deserved a wee bit longer.”
“It’s not about deserving.” The papers that had provided a barrier between wood and face are gathered quickly, slotted into clipboards and shuffled into her accordion bag. “It takes sixteen minutes to get from here to The Facility at a brisk walk, but to get there in eleven I’ll have to punch that up to a light jog and then I’ll be sweaty, and the Administrator will notice because she always notices and-”
A stray paper flutters away as Pauling fails to put it in its appropriate folder.
“Crap.”
That’s not the end of Pauling's troubles either. As she makes her break towards the door, Jeremy scrambles out of his chair and into her way. “Yo, Miss P!”
“Scout. What is it. Kind of in a hurry.”
Jeremy, with his cap a little crooked as he rubs the back of his head, inevitably does not take the hint and says, “yeah you’re always in a hurry, that’s why it took so long to tell you, I wanted to bring it up when it was new ‘n all-”
“Scout. Talk faster.”
“I just uh,” he flounders. “I got a new bike. A scooter, like yours, just because you make it look so cool, and when my car broke down I figured I could make it, uh look cool...too,” he finishes lamely. “So like, in the future if you ever want to talk about bikes and stuff?”
There is a heavy, prolonged movement of air. A sigh if a sigh were on the inhale, sucking all the aggravation out of the tavern like a straw sucking up Gin and Tonic. “That’s great Scout. We can definitely. Do that.”
“Really? That’s great! I mean uh, that’s cool.” He notices that he’s still blocking her exit. “Sorry, let me just uh…” With that, he scoots out of the way, and Pauling is off at a light jog.
Tavish waits until the bell has longs stopped ringing before frowning at Jeremy. “I thought you were over your crush on her.”
“What?” Jeremy seems genuinely startled. “I am! Like wayyy over it, over the moon about it.”
“Not what that means, lad.”
“Point is I’m not into her.” He puts his hands in his pockets. “I just still want to be her friend, okay? That so freaking hard to believe?”
“With you, a bit.”
Mick, watching the exchange with amusement, snorts. Jeremy glares.
“Glad Scout didn’t chase you away,” Tavish says, done with his sworn Pauling-attending duties and free to return to his other customers. “Now that Pyro’s in, we should have the kitchen up and running soon. If you’re staying around that is?”
Mick pauses, and takes a good hard look at the interior of DeGroot Keep. His eyes go up to the inlaid stone ceiling, festooned with glass lamps and beaded tassels that are now doing the heavy lifting as the daylight fades. He takes in the decoration: the murals of lonely bagpipe players inlaid to the wall as if they were tiled there, the stringless harp hung above the bar, the mounted deer head with a cigar in its mouth. His attention hovers on the group of new acquaintances, still carrying on their warm conversation in the corner.
“Sure,” he says. “Why not?”
Tavish smiles. “Here’s the menu,” he says, sliding the laminated square toward Mick.
DeGroot Keep ( all tax included )
- Flaming Burritos $11
- Shrimp Flambé $16
- Cheese Saganaki $10
- Steak Diane $20
- Bananas Foster $7
- Crème Brule $7
- Baked Alaska $11
“He lets Pyro write the menu,” Jeremy says fondly, swinging back into his place beside Mick.
“Aye. And if you ever order a Swedish Glogg, it’s my solemn oath to let Pyro know so they can light it on fire themself,” Tavish says with a wink.
“I don’t even know what a Swedish Glogg is,” Mick says, pouring over the menu in bewilderment.
“Would you like to find out?”
He blanches somewhat. “Maybe some other time.”
At that, the words burrow themselves somewhere warm in the vicinity of Tavish’s heart. Some other time meant the future, meant that even if this stranger was only here for a little while, he’d be back again. The thing is, Tavish likes people. As much as he likes drinks, as much as he likes being a business owner, there’s something special about the way you connect with someone over a bar, one that he’d never gotten anywhere else. He likes this collection of people he’s accumulated, the way ‘regulars’ don’t quite describe them. Because the Keep isn’t a normal tavern, not really.
As Pyro swoops in to take Mick’s—and eventually Jeremy’s—order, Tavish moves a step back, sliding into the background as he uses the moment to drink it all in.
“Hm. New recruit.”
The voice comes from Pauling’s old spot, now a bit shadier than before. In it, a much larger man sits as he contemplates the stranger at the far end of the bar, a bottle of beer before him. He must have snuck in with his spare key, even though Tavish has told him a thousand times that ‘avoiding populated thoroughfares’ isn’t what it’s for.
“Jane,” Tavish laments, though there’s no true reprimand in it. “You don’t need to get your own drinks,” he says of the beer.
Jane draws it closer to himself, as though Tavish might try to take it away. “…Didn’t want to bother you.”
“I’m your bartender, lad. It’s my job.”
Tavish begins the task of retrieving a mug from the lowest shelf, and pouring Jane his usual. As he does, he watches Jane watch the gaggle up front, a look of concentration crossing his already stern features.
“What’s he about, then?” Jane asks as Tavish pours until the beer’s head is just about to crest over the edge.
“Dunno. Haven’t gotten that far yet.”
“But you think he’ll stick around.”
Not a question. “Well, I have a good intuition about these things.”
Jane tilts his head in Tavish’s direction. “Undoubtedly! Your talent for acquiring fruitcakes and weirdos is unparalleled within the state of New Mexico.”
“Aye, that’s how I found you dinnae I?”
To that, Jane only grins, and takes a sip of his beer.
And well, he’s not wrong, is he? Tavish takes a look around at the cozy little community, chuckling as Jeremy inserts himself into Dell’s side of the booth and makes a nuisance of himself, thinking about how he could get Pauling to possibly slow down for a few minutes next time. It’s nice to have a group of people he can count on to always be around, not the least because they’re paying him to make them drinks. It’s nice to have folks to look after.
As a few more people come in through the Keep’s portcullis, he once again remembers to be grateful for everything he’s got.