Chapter Text
Two mugs spring with amber liquid, the tap gushing with the satisfying rise in pitch as each one fills. Practiced hands kill it at just the right time, the foam heads perfectly proportioned, settling briefly before Tavish tops them off. He drops a curly straw in one, and slides them forward.
Dell’s beer is parted from the bartender’s hand for approximately half a second before the engineer grasps it firmly and takes a mighty gulp.
“Trouble in paradise?” Tavish asks as Pyro double takes at the man beside them.
The mug slams back down, and Dell wipes his mouth on his sleeve. “You could say that, yeah.”
“Well come on then,” Tavish says, cocking a hip and leaning sumptuously on the bar. “Tell ‘ole Tavvy your woes.”
“So long as you never call yourself that again, sure. Why else come to a bar but to unload relationship troubles?”
“Truer words never spoken. C’mon spill it, Conagher. First month is always when the heretofore unknown character flaws come bubbling up, and Fortier had a wagonload to begin with.”
“Hell.” Dell rubs the bridge of his nose. “For one, I think Scout’s still mad at me.”
A froth of consoling noises comes from Pyro’s mask, as well as a rubbery pat on the back.
“Alright, maybe she isn’t, but it sure feels like it. And I know I should be giving her time to get used to the idea of me and her dad uh…” He clears his throat. “Seeing each other. But that don’t make it any easier.”
“She’ll come around, Dell,” Tavish assures. “But ‘for one’ makes me think that isn’t all?”
Dell rubs a hand over his freshly shaved head. “I…it’s hard to explain this one. More than it’s just a feeling, not anything he’s said or done but…Seems like he doesn’t want to go anywhere with me. Most of the time when I suggest some place the two of us could spend a nice night at, he goes on grumbling about Teufort being a backwater whatever. But sometimes I wonder if it’s more than that. That he doesn’t want to be seen with me.”
Tavish’s opinion of Fortier is low enough that he thinks ‘yeah that tracks’, but quietly, and to himself. Instead he says the proper thing as both barman and friend of, “ach no, don’t go thinking that. Prissy as the man is, he did make the decision to be with you, and he’ll honor that.” He better. Otherwise he’ll have fifteen stone of Scotsman putting a boot up his arse the next time he walks through the Keep’s door. “I think you’re jumping to an uncharitable interpretation of events.”
“Maybe. I got a cousin’s wedding coming up, and I was hoping to bring him along, but if he’s going to get cold feet…”
Pyro gesticulates something.
“Wadda you mean? Like a chance to get him used to the idea?” Dell asks, to which they nod. “Trying things out at a small gathering might just work…Hey DeGroot, I assume we’re having a going away party for Doe sometime soon, right?”
And just like that the world shifts, the axis of the Earth tilts another 2.5 degrees, the conversation of the same old help-your-friends-fix-their-hearts slips from Tavish’s grasp as he struggles to comprehend what has just been said to him.
“A…a going away party?” he repeats stupidly. “Going bloody where?”
The two spines in front of him straighten, and don’t do much to hide as their topmost vertebra twitch just enough to exchange bewildered looks with one another. Cautiously, Dell says, “his new job up in Minnesota? Didn’t he tell you?”
The underlying accusation of wouldn’t you be the first one he’d tell? as clear as day.
“Is this…?” Permanent? For certain? All the things Tavish wants to know but they’re all butting heads to get out the door first. He whips his head around, to shout across his tavern to the man in the far corner, ‘oi Doe, all of this true?’ but the words catch in his throat. Instead, he hastily says, “‘scuse me lads,” and puts every ounce of concentration into moving his legs across the floor.
His heart does not have the aptitude to panic. Years of the drink have persuaded his blood pressure to never get too worked up over itself, and this morning’s draught still sloshes heavily in the stream. So if his body doesn’t respond to the signals his brain is sending, the ones stumbling along to conclusions he’d never even seen the edges before, then he can thank it for getting him from one side of the Keep to the other.
“You’re moving?” he says before he’s even greeted, before the others at the table even realize he’s there. Its bluntness is unfamiliar in his mouth.
He doesn't get a chance to see Jane's reaction. In that instant, two newcomers (the bell still tinkling) appear at the table, and Mikhail is shouldering into the conversation with, “DeGroot. Mikhail needs advice”
“Pah,” another voice comes elbowing past him. “Such as ‘what ingredients shall I put on my sandwich today?’ I am here with a true emergency.” Helen, having just fought her way over who could squeeze through the front door first (and having lost rather spectacularly) puts both hands on the table. “The board is forming an inquiry into the exact nature of my relationship with Miss Pauling. This is a matter most urgent.”
Mikhail growls in a way that indicates he’d very much like to simply knock her aside again, “is own fault did not think of this when starting relationship. Live with decision. Mikhail has real issue.” He pales considerably. “Doktor talks about moving in together.”
“And?” Helen hisses. “Either you do or you don’t, DeGroot does not have time for such petty frivolities when the entire reputation of The Facility is on the line!”
“Listen, would you two mind coming back some other…” Tavish says, but is promptly ignored.
“Is not this thing you just said,” Mikhail counters. “Is dangerous. Too soon. Doktor wants to pick up with commitment right where he left off. Cannot make him see this. Need advice, is DeGroot's fault in first place.”
“I think fault is-” Tavish tries.
“I have equal claim to his time, as this whole- “““dating””” -business was certainly not my idea!”
“Ach, one at a-”
Although not prone to fits of panic, this does not make Tavish immune to being utterly overwhelmed. Mikhail and Helen are looking to shed blood right in the middle of his nice clean floor, their blame is loud in his ears, and Jane is just feet away. Inches. Agonizingly close and—to Tavish’s drawing dread—wearing a look of guilt on his face.
Jane stands. To Tavish's relief, this is apparently to disrupt the conversation. He says, “you two keep at that. DeGroot’s superior officer needs a word with him.” His hand finds Tavish’s upper arm, and the barman does not resist when he is gently marched away from the indignant pair. Before Helen can muster a demand to return, they’re already in the cramped room below the stairwell.
They’re barely alone for more than a second before Tavish blurts, “you got a new job?”
And what can Jane say but, “…yeah.”
“Oh.”
They stand there, too close to each other where a single pull string light casts the tiny landing into contrast. He’s still breathing heavy, and he wants to ask why didn’t you tell me? but it’s increasingly obvious that this is why Jane didn’t tell him. Because he’s freaking out, because normal people don’t find out their best friend is moving out of town in a perfectly natural and adult change in careers and immediately feel like they’re going to die. He struggles, once, twice, three times to school his expression. He smiles. Friendly, congenial bartender here at your service.
“Where to?” he asks conversationally.
Jane won’t look at him. He struggles to look anyone in the eye on normal circumstances, but the proximity makes it all the more palpable. “Up at Chippewa. There’s an animal sanctuary there that had an opening.”
“Ah, that sounds nice. I know how much you like working with the rehabilitation cases.” It hurts, it hurts so much but he forces out, “I’m really happy for you.”
“Really?”
It isn’t a really of surprised hope. It’s an accusation, disappointment, and Tavish knows for certain that Jane did keep this from him because he knew Tavish would make this horrid, embarrassing, thing out of it.
“I…”
Tavish tries to swallow around the lump in his throat. Don’t cry. Don’t cry you sappy, useless drunk. You’re making it bad enough as it is. Who cares if it feels like all your organs are shutting down one by one? Doc always joked how your liver would go any day now, the rest of them might as well toddle on after it.
“That’s all?” Jane asks doubtfully. “You’re happy for me?”
Jesus why does he keep pushing this? It compels some of the truth out through Tavish’s teeth. “Well…no. I’m not happy. But what am I supposed to do, try to talk you out of it? Throw a fit every time something doesn’t go my way?”
Jane snarls something. His profile is stony, and Tavish is afraid of it, knowing he’s seeing it for now a finite amount of times and afraid he’s doing it wrong. That he’s not appreciating his best friend right, not appreciating him enough. Tick tick tick the seconds go by, and Tavish is wasting it as his mask slips further.
“No,” Jane finally admits. “No, but sometimes I wish you weren’t so damn selfless.”
“The hell is that supposed to mean? Look lad if you’ve found a better job, and you’ve made your decision, I won’t try to guilt you out of it-”
“That’s what I mean!” Jane yells, and the silence that follows is so deafening that the outburst must have reached even the front of the house. “That! Perfect, noble, so goddamn observant about every little problem that wasn’t yours, yet you couldn’t figure me.”
“What?” Tavish asks. “What was I supposed to be seeing?”
“You‘ve diagnosed every lovesick private who’s ever walked into this tavern, but you still couldn’t see how much I was in love with you.”
Somehow, that silence is more powerful, more terrifying than anything that came before it. It reaches deep under Tavish’s skin, pinning him with tenterhooks until he can’t move, can’t think, can’t cycle the air that’s caught in his lungs.
“Twenty goddamn years.” This, it seems, is mostly to himself as Jane stares at the single mop leaned in the corner. He shakes his head. “Everyone else, clear as day. Me? Not a damn clue.”
“Jane I. I don’t think I…”
Jane holds up a hand. “You don’t need to say it maggot. I’ve thought through this conversation as many times as I’ve knocked myself unconscious with a shovel. I know you can’t love me like I love you.” Something wry—nowhere near a laugh but dry enough air squeezed through lungs as pained as Tavish’s—indicates something might have been amusing, once, a long time ago. “To be honest, I didn’t think I was capable of it either. Not when we met. But here we are, I’m the one who’s fucked, and it’s been too damn long Tavish I can’t live like this anymore. So I looked up that sanctuary in Minnesota and applied for the position.”
The admission hangs.
“But,” Tavish says, “even if I- if we- at least you could stay for the Keep, aye? We’re like a family here.”
Jane shakes his head. “They’re not my friends. They’re yours. I’m just the owner’s lunatic buddy they tolerate because they like him so goddamn much.”
“That’s not…” It’s not true. And if it’s true, then it’s because disrespecting Jane is as good as disrespecting Tavish, because Jane’s part of his life. Is his life. “Jane you’re…”
“…I didn’t know if I was going to tell you before I left,” Jane says. “It was probably the honest and American thing to do, to tell you, but there is cowardice in all of us. I’m sorry. For everything. I need to go pack.”
Tavish doesn’t stop him when he steps past and through the plain black door and into the kitchen. What can he say? Already committed as he is to not talking him out of it, still reeling from…from being blind. For not knowing. He finds himself in the kitchen, and it’s by accident when overhears the commotion from the tavern proper.
“-That you are all ungrateful MAGGOTS,” Jane is saying. Tavish has heard him rant before, heard him deride each and every person now clustered awkwardly around him on an individual basis, but he’s never heard something like this. “That man in there has done everything for you! He has listened to your woes, he’s wiped up your big sobby tears when no one else would, he’s guided you to love and support and what have you done for him in return? NOTHING! You take and you take and at the end of the day all you want is more of what he already gives you. You are nothing but a clat of writhing, steaming, WORMS, and when I am gone you WILL treat him better.”
Jane’s voice cuts off sharply. Tavish can only see him from the back, the slope of his shoulders, the way his uniform cuts a silhouette in the fading light from the stained glass.
“You better,” he says softly.
And then Jane is gone, seashells clattering, and Tavish still hasn’t said goodbye.
The assembled patrons are all in various stages of shamefacedness, some stepping from one foot to the other, some staring anywhere else but at the bartender who's just appeared at the kitchen door with an expression that tells that his whole world has just ended.
“Tavern’s closed for the day,” he informs them emotionlessly.
It’s a rash thing to do, but he doesn’t care. How could he care about anything anymore? The supposed family doesn’t wait around to be told twice.
That night, he drinks himself to unconsciousness in record time.
When he wakes, he thinks ruefully that this is the exact opposite of what Jane’s been telling him all this time, about how he needs to take better care of himself. And really needs to now that Jane will be gone. No one looking after him but himself anymore. That’s the only thought that stays his hand as he reaches for the spare whiskey in the bedside table, makes him draw it back and use it to wipe the dried drool from his mouth. Jane won’t be there on his favorite stool anymore, flashing Tavish a smile on busy nights. He won’t break into the kitchen out of misplaced paranoia, he won’t convince Tavish that a drive out of town won’t kill him as long as there’s a new rib place on the other end. There will be a hole in Tavish’s life where Jane once was, and that is all that awaits him in the foreseeable future. Fuck. Why couldn’t he have seen it? Not that Tavish knows what it’s like to fall in love with someone who doesn't-
Well let’s face it. Tavish doesn’t know what it’s like to fall for someone, period. But he can imagine how painful that would be, and if it’s already gone on too long, already become too much, there’s no way he can ask Jane to put up with more of it. Christ, how many times has he botched a relationship because he’s fallen short? Granted, it’s always been with lassies, and lassies he was already dating, but it’s still the same mistake in different packaging. What I need is not in your power to give is what Jane had told him once, and he had been right, though not in the way he’d thought.
Tavish gets up, but doesn’t find it in him to shower. He wraps himself in a blanket and stares at the opposite wall, eye unfocused as he processes the fact that while Jane had the misfortune of falling for him, in the end it’s Tavish’s fault that he’s losing the most important person in his life.
The self-pity wears more heavily on him than the alcohol ever could. It’s only his errant bladder that finally forces him to move, and when he returns he sees the unread message flaring on his phone screen. Pyro’s contact information is a single flame emoji.
i know you kicked us out of the tavern but it’s really important that we see you today. can we come over?
Tavish doesn’t know who we is, assumes it's them and Scout, and naively replies sure. We turns out to be every person he’s ever met.
It seems that way at least. It’s mostly the regulars, more than there were last night, and Tavish sniffs out an ‘intervention’ faster than it takes for you to say scrumpy. But they’ve already seen him take one step into the tavern, and he can’t back out now. What is he going to do? Run out of his own place of business and hide in his room?
They’ve arranged themselves around one chair in particular, doing a right poor job of making any of this look natural, though Dell smiles sympathetically at him as he sits down. Crue smells like smoke and Tavish can practically hear the argument of ‘you better put that out before we go in there’ that must have occurred right outside the tavern door. To Tavish’s left are Pyro and a squirming Scout, more chairs behind them to support others who weren’t even there to bear witness to the events last night (since, Tavish is beginning to suspect, that’s what this is all about.)
“I’ll warn you lads,” he says to a neutral spot in between Mikhail and Ludwig’s heads. “I’m no stranger to interventions, and I’m a tough nut to crack.”
(The joke doesn’t go over particularly well.)
Even to himself his voice sounds oddly flat. Ragged. He watches the exchange of worried looks, and a whisper into Helen’s ear.
“This isn’t meant to be a fight, partner,” Dell says. “It’s a gathering of concerned friends, who are going to help if they can.”
“Doe was right when he told us off,” Mikhail says. “DeGroot does good things for all of us, and we do not help him when he needs us. Now we help.”
“Ach don’t let him get to you,” Tavish bats away. “I’m fine. I do what I do for the love of it, you don’t need to worry about me.”
Pyro makes a distressed noise that belies otherwise.
“No offense lads, but you really don’t know the half of it.” Tavish truly isn’t in the mood to relay the argument to a new audience, no matter how sympathetic.
“We can guess.” This comes from Mikhail. “Doe moves. Heart breaks.”
Aw Jesus. He thought he could do this, sit and bear as his closest friends try to ‘help’ through all this, but having it said so plainly cracks the modicum of resolve Tavish has managed to collect. “It’s not…” he tries, but to his horror the pressure he’s been holding back since the news rears its ugly head. It’s bulbous and angry behind his eye, the reality that Jane’s not moving on a whim, that this has been coming down the track for ages, that it’s irreversible. He can’t make him come home. “Bloody hell.”
The whimper peters out into a true wail of distress, because Tavish is nothing if not some weepy idiot, just as Jane always said he was. The weight of everyone staring isn’t enough to keep him from sobbing, and he throws himself into the nearest waiting shoulder to blubber his woes. The shoulder turns out to belong to Helen.
She stiffens like a possum playing dead. Tavish can’t stop crying though, and he feels an utterly flat palm come up to pat him uncomfortably on the shoulder. “Ah. Hm. There there.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake. Here.”
The mellower voice of Dell commands Helen aside, and he peels Tavish off her and into his own waiting arms. Tavish transfers to the hug gratefully. He hears chairs scoot closer as he makes a mess of Dell’s shirt, the uncomfortableness audible. Well they can all suck it. If they didn’t want to see a grown man cry they shouldn’t have staged a bloody intervention.
“Hey pally, oh whoa okay yeah I know it sucks,” Scout says from somewhere behind him. “But it ain’t too late. You can still tell him.”
“Tell him?” Tavish lifts his head miserably. He assumed that sentence was going to end with ‘convince him’.
Crue groans, “yes you-” He’s elbowed sharply by Scout. “…You poor soul,” he finishes with a healthy veneer of sarcasm.
“We have talked a bit amongst ourselves,” Ludwig picks up this truly baffling train of thought. “Yes Ranger Doe has found superior employment, but he does not seem terribly excited about it. I find it unlikely that he knows your true feelings for him, and if you were to confess, he might see fit to stay. Then things can stay right as they are, all without DeGroot Keep falling into disarray!”
“Okay, ignore that last part Doc said that made us all sound like selfish assholes who only care about the bar,” Scout glares at Ludwig. “But yeah, intervention stuff. It’s obviously killing you, keeping it all balled up inside, so go shoot your shot while you still got it.”
“Hold on now,” Tavish says, righting himself and looking at his friends incredulously. “You all came here, put aside your differences and all that, because you think I’m in love with Jane?”
A collage of faces—some bespectacled some not, some incredulous others exasperated—all glance around the tables shoved together at the center of the room.
“Well…yeah?” Scout says.
Tavish is struck silent, looking between his friends. And suddenly he feels very, very foolish. “I don’t…”
“You don’t need to give us an explanation, mate.” The new voice is shocking, mainly because Tavish didn’t even realize Mick was here, pressed as he is against the corner. Even more so for the fact that he doesn’t even like Jane. “We’re just offering advice. And support. We hope you’ll at least try to sort things out.”
Every single person he knows thinks he’s in love with Jane. He wants to ask why? What makes you think that? but part of him realizes that he already has the answer.
He stands, his chair scooting a tuneless note on the hardwood floor. “I need to go. Now. I- thank you.”
There is a chorus of no worries, and good lucks, various hands patting him on the back as he struggles through chair legs to get to the door. He’d spent years wasting time, he wouldn’t squander any more.
His car starts on the second try, a beaten old thing because even if he isn’t as careless about taking his poison behind the wheel anymore, he’s still afraid he’ll forget one of these days and doesn’t want to wreck something shiny and new. It gets him where he needs to go, and where he needs to go with every fibre of his being is the preserve on the edges of town. His car growls, and screeches up to the mountain as Tavish takes every turn at 15 over.
He does not park in the visitor area. He doesn’t even stop at the end of the drive, even though the signage clearly indicates the two tracks of beaten dirt with the line of grass between are for park vehicles only. Only when he’s in the semicircle of trailers does the car finally come to a halt, dragging lines in the gravel and expelling him, panting, from the driver’s seat.
Jane is not packing. He has no box in hand, no bit of furniture over his shoulder. When Tavish’s car had come barreling in he’d been stood in the clearing west of the homes, up a wide grassy path, just watching the sun set.
Tavish runs. The urgency has meaning, even if it’s to him and him alone.
He stumbles to Jane, straightening the words, knowing he will make this count, and says, “you want me to start asking for things? Fine. I’m asking you to stay.”
Jane looks at him. The orange light behind him casts him heavenly, his expression of surprise the gold against his cheeks, the red along his shoulders. The same grass that clawed around his home whips at his ankles, the breeze shaking it and random leaves about. The expression doesn't change, still stoic and without hope as he looks at the wheezing bartender who's followed him on this pointless attempt.
The lack of reply does not deter Tavish. “Please Jane I…I can’t say I know what you’re going through, what I’ve made you go through all these years," he says. “I don’t know if I love you. But I do know that I can’t imagine my life without you in it. I’ve never asked myself what I need, and what I need is…is you Jane.”
He takes a few steps closer. The run up the western hill really has taken the wind out of him, or maybe its heart that refuses to stop its galloping pace. Either way, when he stands in front of Jane, he can’t seem to catch his breath.
Jane’s shoulders, still brushed with that blushing light, lift. “I don’t know what you’re asking me.”
“I’m asking…I’m asking to be yours.”
Tavish reaches out, forgetting boundaries, forgetting everything, and touches Jane’s cheek.
Jane’s so warm underneath the pads of his fingers, and it doesn’t feel wrong the way he thought it might. The way it’s been other times, when he’s forced himself to at least try to exercise the most perfunctory of romantic duties. There is no repulsion of unwanted closeness. It’s wholly right.
Until Jane brushes his fingers away. "I know you don't really want that. Goddammit Tavish, I know the way I love you isn't the way you...want me around. I can't stay. I can't keep fighting this one-sided war all by myself."
"It doesn't have to be one-sided," Tavish says. "Maybe we can't be like every other lovey dovey happy couple we’ve put together, but maybe we don't have to be.”
"I..." Jane glances back at the sunset, then to his trailer, the boxes lying abandoned outside.
"Isn't it worth trying? If neither of us really want you going, isn't it worth it to try something a bit unorthodox?"
"You're really mean this." Jane asks it flatly, more seriously than he's ever looked at Tavish before, which is saying something. "Being with...me."
“If I’m going to be selfish for just once in my bloody life,” Tavish says, “I sure as hell want it to be for keeping you.”
“Then...Okay,” Jane says.
“Okay?” Tavish says. He’d hoped—but also hadn’t dared to hope. Had only been concentrating on making sure his words came out in the right order, that he hadn't even considered what might happen if they actually worked. “Even though…”
Jane draws back just enough to put a hand over Tavish’s mouth. “Okay,” he repeats.
“Oh,” Tavish whispers through the fingers when they finally part.
They return to the Keep, and they are heroes coming home to the castle they’ve built.
Those he’d left behind are not waiting like solemn sentries, to Tavish’s immense relief, but they are milling about his tavern with a grimness that immediately disperses on seeing Tavish and Jane enter in together. There is an unspoken and collective sigh of relief, and then they resume whatever it was they were doing before but now with actual enthusiasm.
(What they were doing before was mostly being served Swedish Gloggs by a giddy and unleashed Pyro.)
“Why in Abraham Lincoln’s name is everyone staring at us?” Jane grumbles. It is, oddly, the most comforting return to normalcy Tavish experienced.
“I’ll tell you later,” he says. “Right now, I just want to grab a pint and find somewhere quiet to sit down for a bit. Professor Zakharov, Doctor Humboldt,” he nods respectfully to the pair of doctors as they pass, who in turn raise their mugs in salute.
“Fine by me,” Jane grunts. “Better than thinking about all the stuff I have to unpack.”
“Ah, that’s always the worst end of the packing process, isn’t it?”
“And don’t think I’ve forgotten whose fault it is that I now have to extract all my worldly possessions from a bunch of two-foot cardboard cubes after moving exactly zero miles!”
“You have my sincerest apologies.”
It feels good to say it so easily. The slight undercurrent of tension that’s run between them for years is completely absent, a tension Tavish knows he must have noticed but had ignored all the same. The way he can simply reach up and squeeze Jane’s shoulder like he did ten years ago is staggering.
There is an argument, toothless, jocular, from the table belonging to Mick, Scout, and Crue.
“Just saying you could totally spring for it,” Scout rambles on, thoroughly heedless to the pulsing vein in Crue’s forehead. “Considering you got loads on the side ‘n all…”
“What you are suggesting would cost the entire payout from one of my contracts,” Crue scorns.
“…What exactly do you do for work again?” Mick eyes him from across the table.
With the clearly enunciated syllables of a man daring you to challenge him on it, Crue says, “I am a dentist.”
Tavish chuckles, and leaves them to it. Approaching the bar nearly causes Pyro to vibrate out of their suit, head whipping back and forth with a series of mumbles that is unmistakably pleased. Before Tavish can get a word in, they disappear underneath, humming and clattering about in the various bottles.
“They were hoping you’d come back together,” Dell explains. “I mean, so was I, but they’ve been practicing mixing something special, just for the two of ya’ll.”
When they arise, they have a bottle of cognac in hand, which they promptly upend into a pair of glasses.
“…You’ve been sneaking peeks at my recipe book haven’t you, you little devil?” Tavish asks as the mix appears before him. The only reply he gets is a filter-strained giggle.
The last bit of bitters applied, Pyro ushers the drinks into each of their hands and shoos them off.
“This one of yours, then?” Jane asks, eyeing the drink as he follows Tavish deeper into the stronghold.
“Is not on fire is it? Just one of my little experiments. Though I’ll be honest, it’ll be odd to try the finished product when I didn’t mix it myself.”
The lower level beckons. Helen and Pauling are momentary obstacles, partially blocking the half-flight’s entrance. When she sees them, Pauling flashes the biggest double thumbs up ever seen between the 106th and 107th longitudes.
When they’re close, she prompts, “behind you ma’am,” to her partner, tugging on Helen’s arm to get her out of the way.
“What?” Helen interrupts herself, midway through a sentence about the inefficacy of assassins these days. “No, this is the only spot in this whole dreary bar that has lighting not reminiscent of a dungeon. We are perfectly-”
“Helen,” Miss Pauling says. And Tavish never thought he’d see the day. Miss Helen, terror of Teufort, is obediently led away by her 5’ 1” girlfriend.
The lower bar is free for their leisure. Tavish sits in one of the couches, and immediately there is warmth around him, an arm snaking forward and clutching the front of his shirt.
When he turns his head, Jane stutters, “I uh. Sorry. I’ve just always wanted to…”
“No apologies necessary.” Tavish lifts his free arm and drops it around Jane’s shoulders.
It still doesn’t feel wrong. He hasn’t hit that invisible barrier that always seems to come up when he gets like this, and that both thrills and terrifies him. The idea that it could be waiting for him in the distance, but also that it might not be waiting for him at all.
“Merasmus is going to be pissed at you,” Jane notes absently.
“That so?”
“Mm. He was really looking forward to getting rid of me.”
“Ah. Well if he tries to seek his supernatural revenge, he’ll have another thing coming. I can beat a wizard any day of the week.”
“If you think you’re going to be dueling any wizards without me, then you are a hippie and a fool, DeGroot!”
A smile springs over Tavish’s face. He raises his drink for Jane to toast. “I’d never deny you that honor. He comes rolling down on clouds and thunder to have the bar brawl of the century, you’ll be the one I call to have my back.”
“Damn straight.”
Jane clinks their glasses together, and they swill in unison.