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hankwritten · 10 months

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A Tavern Named Keep [5/6]

Demoman-centric Modern AU

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

In a small uni-town in New Mexico, DeGroot Keep serves liquor and succor to an eclectic yet loyal group of patrons, and has for many years. The Keep owes its success to its equally colorful owner, who always seems to know what you need—whether that be a stiff beer or a word of advice. But, between setting up his patrons or sifting through his friends’ problems, will Tavish remember to take care of himself?

“Now! If you turn your pathetic civilian eyeballs that have never witnessed the horrors of war to your right, you will see the nesting grounds of the Lesser Prairie-Chicken.”

Those actually paying attention to Jane’s tour as he guides their overlarge hiking group through the wilds of Valles Caldera National Preserve rotate their binoculars as indicated. This group includes Miss Pauling, (her tongue sticking out of her mouth as she scribbles furiously in her newly purchased Billious Hale’s Field Guide to North American Birds, and How To Break the Spine of Every One!) Mikhail, (two wrist straps hack-jobbed together in order to hold his disposable camera in place), and, surprisingly enough, Scout, (practicing how fast she can capture each specimen in her sketchbook before they fly away. Already she has six birds, two burrowing rodents, and one ‘yeti’ (at Ranger Doe’s suggestion.))

“Tympanuchus pallidicinctus is a fearsome foe to meet in its natural habitat,” Jane goes on. Every time he speaks, the various bits and bobs of navigational equipment dangling from his neck jingle; the compass clatters into the magnifying glass, which swings into the pocketknife, which knocks the binoculars, so on and so forth. Hearing even Jane’s famously robust voice over it all is a struggle. “The caldera is their hunting ground. They climb to dizzying altitudes in order to locate prey up to eight times their size, then dispatch them quickly by dropping objects of significant weight. When it reaches terminal velocity, the pathetic maggot-sucker is turned into gibs on impact!”

“Object of significant weight,” Mick, a significant amount of woodsman’s supplies strapped to his back as well, repeats suspiciously. “Like what?”

“A rock! Or perhaps even a coconut!”

“A coconut? What would a bloody coconut be doing in the middle of the bloody desert?”

“This is not a desert, it is an elevated watershed meadowland! And maybe the coconut rolled here!”

This debate never makes it to Pauling, who remarks cheerily as the two squabble on, “this really was a good idea, getting us all out of Teufort for a bit. I pretty much never get to go anywhere with nature. Or fresh air. Or sunlight.”

Before Tavish can comment, Scout is already pouncing like a Lesser Prairie-Chicken on an unfortunate bobcat.

“Yeah yeah, me too,” she says. “Just like, never get out you know. Never any grass where I was growing up except the abandoned square where my brothers and I would play baseball, and now I’m too busy with school but hey! We’re out here now ain’t we? And look, I got a little bird book too. Except I’m drawing in mine instead ‘a writing, I don’t got the way with words you do, but isn’t it cool we match?”

Scout holds up her sketchbook with blithe expectancy.

Such blithe expectancy, there really is no possible way Pauling can respond with anything approaching the same level of zeal. “Yeah, Scout,” she says. “Really cool. Super awesome that we both…own books.”

This lukewarm response does not, in fact, curtail Scout’s enthusiasm. “It is, yeah. Books are great, huh? For like, carrying around, and, uh-”

“Thanks for suggesting this, Tavish,” Pauling says quickly and altogether too loudly. “Now that Helen only has me working forty hours a week, it’s crazy how much free time I have, but I probably would have spent it all glued to your bar if you hadn’t said something.”

“Tavern,” Tavish corrects. “And true, I think everyone here lacks a chance to stretch their legs every now and again. Though I cannae claim this trip was entirely with ulterior motive.”

He glances back.

Lollygagging behind the rest of the pack, Crue and Dell are at it again, bitching something fierce about the way Dell parked his truck. Or maybe they’ve moved on to something different by now: whether it’s pronounced pecan or pecan, is light a wave or a particle, if bears shit in the woods or not. Although Crue has slipped comfortably into the Keep’s social structure for the most part (accepted as long as he’s helping Scout through her transition and he doesn’t have the balls to insult one of Tavish’s drinks again) there’s still one critical rub.

That rub being Dell Conagher.

What the hell is Dell’s problem Tavish can’t figure, and good Lord he’s tried. Usually the man’s about as mellow as a hog in a mud puddle, but something about the pompous stranger just drives him crazy, picking fights that even Jane wouldn’t have thought of, (and picking fights is that man’s personal pastime.) When asked, all Dell would supply is, “hell I don’t know DeGroot. He’s a snake is what he is. It just gets under my skin.” Crue is no better, always jumping at any opening Dell gives him, as though he’s got a pent up backlog of critiques and is just waiting for an outlet. Acutally, now that Tavish thinks about it, that might not even be an exaggeration. He’s certainly less critical of everything than when he first came to Teufort, save for their dear engineer.

Tavish had fallen to his default assumption about these sorts of interpersonal relationships, and (rather optimistically ) contrived a situation where Crue and Dell might be able to work out their differences. A little time out of town to see the more palatable sides of one another.

“At the confessional: was trying to see if I could set Dell and Crue up together,” Tavish says. “Thought they might make up if they made out, bit of fresh air to jog the hormones.”

“What?” Scout gags, whatever she’d been trying to commiserate with Pauling quickly forgotten. “Actually, no, no don’t answer that. I’m out, freaking gross man.”

With a fading mumble of ‘yuck. yuck.’, she swiftly departs, her poorly fastened sleeping bag swaying as she peels to the front of the pack. The vanguard consists of Mick, Ludwig, and Pyro, (who immediately shows their girlfriend the cool bug they just found), but it’s clear that Mundy is the true spearhead of the operation. Despite their residents ranger running commentary on the various flora and fauna of the reserve, (currently informing Mikhail how pre-agricultural societies in the valley used obsidian tools since all their rocket launchers were lost in a volcanic event), Mick has been the one navigating the group down various hiking trails, now leading their post-lunch return to the camp ground.

“You really think you can hook Crue and Dell up?” Pauling asks.

“Nah, that’s a bust. I think they honestly just hate each other.”

But, since the bartender playing cupid is apparently still novel for some people, her question catches Mikhail’s attention. He asks, “DeGroot is now matchmaker?”

“He certainly tries,” Jane barks, annoyance at least in part for the theft of his audience. “But we all need to face the facts that that man is not as smooth operator as he claims to be; he couldn’t pin a tail to a donkey, let alone people who have legitimate unresolved sexual tension together. I told him not every pair of bickering canucks secretly want to swap spit, but he did not listen!”

“Canucks?” Pauling asks, baffled.

“Canadians Miss Pauling! The both of them!”

“I’ll be honest Jane, most of the time I can see where you’re coming from, or at the very least the other side of the canyon you jumped to get there but…Canadians?”

“Yes!” Jane slams a fist into his open hand. “Conagher lacks true American volatility! All attempts to construct complex machinery should spontaneously combust at least six times before bringing them onto the field. Obviously he’s a Canadian spy, sent here to assassinate our president, the man who wields the great American sword the Mayflower which he drew from the Liberty Bell on the morning of his sixteenth birthday!”

“…And Crue?”

“They speak French in Canada, don’t they.”

Despite the fact that he was rather brutally just called on his failures as a Casanova, Tavish can’t help but chuckle. “Ah, that’s a good one.”

“A good one?” Mikhail repeats doubtfully.

“Aye,” Tavish smiles fondly. “Ah, listen to this one. Hey! Jane!”

“What?” Jane snaps, putting down the binoculars.

“I can never keep track o’ American politics. Who is the president, again?”

Jane snorts. “Damn stupid question, private! It’s Lyndon B. Johnson, god rest his soul.”

And thusly, he returns to scouring the meadow. His two closest travelling companions exchange silent grievances, while the third keeps pace merrily.

“…He doesn’t really think Johnson is still president, does he?” Pauling ventures to ask.

“I’m surprised you’re concerned about that, when he’s also fully aware that Johnson is dead,” Tavish says pleasantly.

The bubble of cheer is short lived. While they’ve been debating Canadian-ness and monitoring black-footed ferrets, Mick has been grinding his teeth to near audible degrees, growing increasingly irate as he leads them back to the campground. Each fork in the trail comes with several minutes of indecision, the whole party stalling as he glares furiously at the map in his hands. His breaking point comes in the form of Scout asking, “hey, we getting a move on this century, chucklenuts?”

“We’d already be back by now if he hadn’t ruined my bloody map!”

Mick whirls on Jane with the tensile strength of a slingshot. Jane, ever difficult to read with his hat pulled down, hardly reacts. He cocks his head, and eyes the half-crumpled map being shoved in his direction.

“The brochures they give you down at the front are crap,” he says, not a drop of defensiveness in his voice. “I made some corrections.”

“You vandalized it is what you did,” Mick growls. “Fucking took it out of my pocket while my back was turned, you knew you were sabotaging us you sneaky ratbag.”

“Oi!” Tavish cuts in, stepping toward Mick. “Let’s not have any of that. A vandalized map is one thing, but accusing Jane of trying to sabotage us is another.”

“Exactly!” Jane barks. “You should be thanking me, Bilbo. I put no less than twelve agreeable shortcuts through the preserve, ones that would have us setting up our tents this very minute if you had taken them!”

“It’s scribbles to nowhere! I can’t even see the actual trail anymore under all the markings,” Mick snaps. “Half of it isn’t even a path, just a shitty drawing of a raccoon.”

Before Jane can reply, tight lips dawning on reproach, Dell and Crue finally catch up, no doubt shocked that another argument could dare to overshadow their own.

“What the hell’s gotten into ya’ll?” Dell says, quickly noting the stances Jane and Mick have found themselves in, the rest of the party gathered around like sports spectators.

“That map again no doubt,” Crue says airily. His general demeanor shows he’s just about at the end of his rope and also probably dying for a cigarette. “The bushman is convinced our feral simpleton here has been trying to impair our return to civilization. Personally, I think even that is beyond him.”

Jane’s face hardens. “You have been spreading lies and slander, gossiping about me to the Canadian of all people?”

“Oh don’t get self righteous on me you piker,” Mick spits. “If you didn’t do it on purpose, then you did it because you’re an idiot, which is even worse. To hell with this.” The map lands on the ground with a softer plap than the drama of the situation demands. “I can find my own way back.”

“You are not properly qualified to traverse this valley, not without a guide,” Jane says. “You will get lost, and a lost civilian is not something I cannot allow! It goes against my ranger’s oath.”

“There is no bloody ranger’s oath!” Mick throws up his hands. “And I’ve spent months in the outback with nothing but a rifle, a waterskin, and the clothes on my back. I know how to handle myself in the wilderness, and I’m better off without following your lunacy into a sinkhole.”

“Ridiculous! All the sinkholes are on the north side of the preserve.”

“And the offer goes to the rest of you,” Mick continues. “If you’d rather get back to the road before night falls instead of camping in the middle of the mountains.”

The assembled shook themselves at being addressed, as though having forgotten that they were breathing entities with a stake in this.

“How dare you!” Jane blusters. “I have worked at this park for twenty-four years! No one knows these woods better than I do.”

“And yet one of your ‘shortcuts’ does lead directly into the lake,” Ludwig says thoughtfully, having picked up the discarded map. To Mick, “you’re sure you know the way back from here?”

“Positive,” Mick says without hesitation. “And you’ve heard the bullshit he’s been spouting all day. You can’t trust that he has a better handle on geography than he does on anything else.”

“The bushman has a point,” Crue says, as though the outcome matters not at all, as though Jane’s not gone frozen while the rest of the party debates among themselves. “If there is an expert in surviving barely civilized conditions, it is he.”

“As much as I hate to agree with Crue on this,” Dell says, and Tavish would punch the air in vindication if it were under literally any other circumstances, “it ain’t healthy to sleep in places where any ‘ole critter wandering these parts might stumble across ya. Personally, I’d like to do all that we can to get to the designated camping area.”

One by one, the votes come in, the protests are half hearted at best, and Jane no longer moves. He just stands there, any emotion stripped from him as he calcifies under something worse than humiliation.

Alright. This is terrible. Tavish can still salvage this.

He claps his hands together, all big smiles, and says, “so we’ll be splitting the party then, eh? No worries, we’ll both take our separate ways, and then meet all back at the campsite tonight. Sound good?”

No one agrees at first, wary of the sudden change in tone.

Tavish doesn’t let the awkward silence linger. He pats Jane warmly on the shoulder. “Looks like it’s just you and me, lad.”

Whatever frozen state Jane had found himself in, he breaks out of it, staring wide-eyed at Tavish. “You…?”

“You sure you don’t want to come with us, pally?” Scout asks, in all the tact being Scout will allow. When Pauling elbows her, she mutters, “oof.”

“Nah, I’m good,” Tavish says through false cheer. “No one knows Valles better than Ranger Doe here. I trust him more than anyone.”

The subtle dig is not lost on Mick who, as the two parties split and the far larger one trickles back down the way they came, glances at Jane and mutters something about ‘mental sickness’ under his breath. Tavish is glad he mutters it. If he’d said it aloud, Tavish would have broken his nose on principle.

Another hand comes to touch Tavish’s, but when he glances over, the words Jane obviously wants to say don’t come out.

“Let’s go,” Tavish supplies instead. “The sooner we get a move on, the sooner we meet up with them, aye?”

Jane nods. Jane then takes them on a journey.

Tavish hasn’t been home in years, and either the highlands weren’t as tumultuous as this or he’s gotten severely out of shape in his old age. He soon understands Mick’s anxiety, for while he’d thought night was still several hours away, the light disappears quickly as they hike, sweat on the back of his neck cooling as the shadows stretch.

They keep walking.

It seems they’ll go one direction, then the next, they double back again to the point where they may as well be going in a circle. At first Tavish tries to keep track of where north is, but it's hopeless when they get to the more thickly wooded part of the hills. Yet they keep walking, and Tavish worries about their friends, and Jane takes them on a winding expedition that no man would think to keep imprisoned on a map.

And then they arrive at the campground.

There’s only a few other spots taken, one of which is Mick’s van. None of the pitched tents belong to the Keep’s constituents. The last of the sun’s light disappears down the gap in the trees where the road cleaves them in two.

“…They’re not here,” Jane says.

Tavish can see that perfectly well, but he says, “aye. Must have taken a longer way than we did.”

Jan straightens. “We should go look for them.”

“Ach, they’ll be fine,” Tavish says, waving an errant hand at the woods. “They have the camping equipment. As long as they were canny enough to start setting up when they realized they weren’t getting back in time, they’ll live.”

This statement hangs awhile as crickets chirp in the hearty bluegrass planted by the registration office. In dawning realization, Jane says, “we don’t have the camping equipment.”

“Aye?” Tavish thought that was fairly if A then B.

Jane’s face screws up with something, but whatever it is escapes from his body before forming. “Come on. We can stay at my place for the night.”

There’s no chance to acquiesce, for Jane is off, and Tavish has to power walk to not be left behind. Before true dark comes the desaturation, the draining color from the little off-road passage tucked behind the roaring utility boxes, turning the world grayscale until night is sure of itself. The staff-only road winds up the hills slightly, hidden away so no campers stumble across it, and at the end is the ranger residencies, a handful of stationary trailer homes nestled modestly against the greenery. Long grass caresses against the tin walls of Jane’s home as he unlocks the door.

“The ‘ole cardboard Tetris?” Tavish asks of the abode’s interior. When Jane grunts in confusion, he elaborates, “what’s with all the boxes?”

“Oh. Just reorganizing.”

Jane’s hand lies flat on the fridge door, staring at something pinned there by tiny tequila-shaped magnets. (Jane isn’t the only one with a penchant for themed Smissmas gifts.)

Tavish is still puzzling over the crated possessions when he hears him ask, “why didn’t you go with the others?”

When Tavish glances over his shoulder Jane is staring right back at him. Tavish blinks. “Er…why…would I?”

“If I’d gotten us lost, we would have been stranded out there.”

“I suppose, yeah. But seems unlikely, doesn’t it?”

Jane stares at him a half moment longer before turning away. “You put too much faith in me.”

“Is putting faith in my friends another thing I shouldn’t do now? Along with the cardinal sin of ‘helping people’?” Jane doesn’t respond, and Tavish sighs. “Lad, everyone else ditched because they’re a bunch of easily distracted ninnies who followed the newest piper that came to town; but why on Earth would I leave you?”

Jane swallows silently. It’s hard to tell in the dark, but it looks like he closes his eyes.

Half bitterly, Tavish says, “I know I’m not supposed to ask you if anything’s wrong or whatever, but if something’s happened that makes you think we’re not on the same team, you’d tell me, aye?”

The paper under Jane’s hand comes off the fridge with a clatter, and he stuffs it in his pocket. The only thing he says is, “I’ll get you a spare pillow.”

Tavish lies on the couch that night—the sounds of pure, unadulterated nature outside so different from the pitiful attempts of urbanization of Teufort—and hopes their friends are doing okay out there.

You can put a soldier in the middle of a middling national park, but you can’t take the soldier out of the man. No time is that more apparent than at 5am, when Tavish awakens to the sound of a showerhead turning on. He pulls the loaned pillow over his head and attempts to go back to sleep, but this is comically fruitless, as no more than twenty minutes later the flagpole ceremony commences and a bugle blares through the rangers’ residences. Tavish emerges from the trailer bleary-eyed, and is too numb with sleep to do anything but watch Jane hoist the scrap of color notch by notch above the still unconscious roofs. No doubt the occupied ones have owners that are used to this by now, or at the very least are wise enough to spring for some earplugs.

One of the doors slams open to the clamorous denunciation of, “Doe!”

The man (who by the slightly larger size of his accommodations and the fact he’s taken on the burden of dealing with Jane, is probably the warden), storms across the yard with a pink bathrobe pulled tight around his shoulders.

“Fool!” the hollering, nearly as bad as the bugle itself, continues. “Cease! Cease at once, how many times have I told you to get rid of that screeching contraption from the pits of hell?”

“This month? Eleven.” Jane scratches behind his ear. “And I will tell you the same thing I have told you each of those eleven times: this is our duty as Rangers of the National Park Service! It says right in the handbook to honor the flag every morning.”

“That does not! Include! The trumpet!”

The warden is in the later stages of completely wasting away, his gaunt face losing a year with every minute in Jane’s company. He rubs his incredibly tired eyes with the hand not holding together his robe.

“Fah! This is your last warning, Doe. If I catch you playing that thing one more time, it. Will. Be. Your. Doom!” The warden spins on his (now dust covered) slippers and stalks back into his trailer.

“I will not bow to your threats, wizard!” Jane calls after the slamming door. “You cannot crush true American spirit! Not even with pink slips!”

“Wizard?” Tavish hums, suppressing a yawn.

“Yup,” Jane says. “No proof yet, but as soon as I do the forestry board will have him out of here like that.” He snaps his fingers.

Tavish nods. “One less thing to worry about, then. Ready to go rescue our friends?”

“…The friends who ditched us and followed some urine-drinking civilian to the middle of nowhere?”

Tavish thinks about that for a moment. “Hm. Breakfast first?”

“Yeah. That.”

When they finally catch up with the missing chunk of their party, it is two hours and several rounds of bacon later. All things considered, it could have been much worse; Mick’s navigation might have led them to the other side of the volcanic lip, or down to the wrong stretch of highway. As it is, the group had gotten close, but not close enough, and they’d set up camp only a moderate hike up the Redando trail.

Tavish and Jane arrive to a campsite slowly deflating. That fact that every half-minute, someone shoots Mick a dirty look is unmissable.

“I take it you lot didn’t have a pleasant night,” Tavish asks of the nearest wayward soul.

Mikhail grunts, and sullenly goes back to stuffing his tent in its bag.

Pyro, at least, is happy to see them. They bound up and cheerfully sign, “<this sucked! I’m sorry Jane, I promise to believe you the next time you tell me about Most Shrews.>”

Most Shrews? Tavish mouths silently.

“The venomous and completely shredded cousin to the Least Shrew,” Jane explains. To Pyro, he signs, “<apology accepted, Smokey. We all have to learn by falling on our asses every now and then.>”

“Can say that again,” Tavish remarks, looking around. Nearly every face is drooping and sleep deprived, and they didn’t have their eardrums shattered at five this morning. “Was it really that bad?”

“It was cold,” Pauling says as she walks up, tugging at a fashionable sweater that looks very new and very much like her au courant partner bought it for her. “And after everyone paired up, it was only Crue and Dell left, and they were not happy about it. They were arguing all night. Or at least I think they were. Mick snores really loudly.” If it were possible for her to slouch even more, she would.

“…Now that you mention it, I haven’t seen either of them around.”

Tavish takes another look. There are Ludwig and Mikhail packing up the cooking supplies, Scout spinning in circles trying to scratch a bug bite on her back, Mick shunned to the corner where he’s distinctly Not Looking at the new arrivals; but no Fortier or Conagher.

“I’m going to go check in on them,” Tavish excuses himself.

So it’s only Tavish there when the tent entrance is unzipped, a lone bartender who peaks his head in and sees…There’s really no way around it. He sees the pair of mortal enemies cuddling.

Crue’s teeth are chattering in his sleep, and it’s all clearly intentional because the two sleeping bags have been zipped together so Dell can wrap his arms around the leaner man. Even as Tavish stands there, gawking, the morning chill from the open tent flap blows in and Dell groggily opens his eyes. It takes approximately four seconds for him to become awake, realize he has a shivering Crue pressed to his chest, and notice that Tavish is standing over them both with the most I told you so expression a human face can manage.

“Aw hell,” he swears.

“Sorry to bother you,” Tavish says, putting his hands up in surrender, a motion that does not neutralize all other signs of smugness. “Just delivering the wakeup call.”

“I swear it ain’t what it looks like,” Dell tries, then reconsiders. “Damn it. Shouldn’t even bother. You’re all full of it now, ain’t you?”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.” Tavish takes a step out of the tent. Now that Crue has begun to stir, he says, “I’ll sooth the other’s worries. But swing by the Keep when we get back to civilization; I have a new drink I’d love you to try. As a way to say congratulations.” He winks, and lets the flap fall closed, ignoring the curses that follow him out as he leaves Dell to deal with whatever Crue’s personality is like in the morning.

#engiespy #practical espionage #tf2 fanfiction

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