"Boxes, Breakfasts, and Boom-Boom," Highlander/Haven, gen
[On AO3 here]
For crossovers100 prompt #51 -- water. Set between Seasons 1 & 2 of Haven, and completely disregards Kastagir's death. (See …Greatly Exaggerated if you just need an excuse to have that reprobate around.) I didn't actually play in 'A Ficathon Walk Into A Bar,' but it was certainly inspirational. In this case, they walked out of a bar.
Thanks to Dragon, Devo, and SamJohnsson for beta. All mistakes are, of course, mine.
Boxes, Breakfasts, and Boom-Boom
Audrey made it most of the way to the station before she got the text message from Duke. If you could call 'zddftt78' a message; she didn't. Audrey considered the time and the sender and didn't call back, just in case Duke had company who didn't want him using a phone. She headed for his boat instead.
On a morning after Duke had been working at his bar until midnight, the gangplank on the Cape Rouge shouldn't be out already at 7:45. For that matter, Duke's car wasn't exactly parked in the lines, which was a little odd since he'd developed a firm policy of not adding to his traffic ticket collection.
Audrey checked the door of his car; it was locked. She slipped onto the Cape silently, one hand resting on her pistol, and headed towards the living quarters. That door was unlocked too, which was even more wrong. And the galley was a disaster.
The floor wasn't too much of a mess, but some of the lights were still on despite the sun through the skylights, and the table and bar looked like Duke had held a late night party. Dirty mugs and glasses, plates and wadded-up paper napkins, and open and sometimes empty containers lay everywhere.
Audrey raised an eyebrow as she tracked the path of the impromptu festivities, wondering why in the world Duke had thrown a party here instead of at the Grey Gull.
The table was covered in greasy paper towels on paper plates, glass jars of applesauce and apple butter (both empty), and a tipped-over mason jar hand-labeled as cranberry-pear chutney (also empty). Another plate lay abandoned in the middle of the table, covered with mostly devoured puddles of what looked like ketchup, steak sauce, and cocktail sauce.
The bar had a few more stained paper towels, deserted wine glasses with orange pulp dried along the edges, and coffee mugs edged in drying, coffee-stained whipped cream. The fumes coming off the mugs were still high-proof. To one side of the mugs, a crock of pumpkin butter sat open; it still had a couple inches of the stuff left. A large glass held maybe an inch of water and ice in the bottom -- it didn't reek of vodka, anyway -- and behind the counter, Duke Crocker was soundly asleep on the floor of his galley.
Whoever had been here might not have cleaned up the mess, but they'd put a pillow under Duke's head and pulled a blanket over him. They'd apparently found him his sunglasses too.
Audrey shook her head, smiling despite herself, and first took a picture with her phone and then resisted the urge to record his snoring. She also made sure she was out of range before she called his name.
She didn't leave, however. Hearing this story definitely trumped stopping at Rosemary's for pastries.
~ ~ ~ ~
If the subject ever came up around Nathan, Duke was damn well gonna deny he'd been drunk. He hadn't been drunk.
Around Audrey, however… okay, yeah, he'd admit there'd been a lot of vodka and bourbon at the card game. For that matter, that one out of town guy, Kastagir, had his own homebrew in a flask and that shit was moonshine of some form or other. Boom-boom was the most honest fucking name Duke had heard for an alcohol in a long time.
However. Duke was one, not stupid, two, not suicidal, and three, all too aware that, like so many other things, he would never hear the end of it if he got pulled over for driving under the influence in Haven. So he'd had some coffee after the poker game ended and before driving back to the Cape Rouge.
Kastagir had stuck around for some of the coffee, spiking his with cream, cinnamon sugar left over from that morning's French toast special, and the last of his boom-boom. What the hell, though, he was an adult -- his jokes sure as hell were -- and despite the drinks he'd put away, Duke would have sworn the man was sober as a grave.
Of course, Duke would have sworn he was sober, too, but he'd swear he'd walked into the Rouge's galley and surprised a stranger who had a katana. A good one, too, not one of the pot metal 'reproductions.'
Okay. Maybe Duke was a little tipsy, since he spent a few seconds admiring the ripple pattern in the sword instead of getting the guy to put it back up.
"Going to stand there all night?" The rasping voice was way too damn amused.
"You going to try and stick that thing in me?" Duke asked, deliberately deadpan. Yeah, okay, why give him ideas, but Duke was wondering when his life started flashing in front of his eyes, honestly.
The stranger laughed suddenly; it turned his face from sullen and almost primitive to downright attractive. (Another thing that Duke was not telling Nathan, thanks. Probably.) "I should have known you could hold your liquor. God knows your father could."
Duke put a hand up. "No. Absolutely not. We are not discussing my father. I'm not even sure now if you're real or if I'm still lying on the floor of my bar in a pool of that boom-boom. Jesus, that's an accurate name. But either way, we are not talking about my father."
His visitor was grinning now. "And you drove here? Sit. I'll make you breakfast."
"You broke into my boat--"
"It was hardly locked."
"And you know what boom-boom is, and you thought I'd still be drunk instead of here, which means you set me up--" He paused but the man waved a hand in a 'carry on' motion that reminded Duke of, well, himself. "--and now you're going to cook me breakfast? With my own food?"
The guy shrugged and put his sword away in his trench coat. "Call it an apology."
"No. No. What the hell are you doing on my boat?" Coffee, even most of a pot of it, even loaded with cream and inhaled with a bagel, didn't entirely sober you up from a night's hard drinking. And talking with your hands, it turned out (again), could sometimes throw you off-balance. He hadn't tripped over his own legs like this, though, since that final growth spurt.
To Duke's surprise, the guy caught him before his shoulder hit the counter. His feet still went out from under him, the guy's feet went out from under him, and then they were both on the floor by way of the counter (the stranger's head), the table (Duke's out-flung arm), and a chair (both of them; the other guy's leg first, then it landed on Duke's back).
"Ow." He looked at the stranger, the stranger looked back at him from maybe four inches away -- and they both started laughing. And laughing. And laughing some more, because it wasn't that damn funny, but really it was. Duke was drunk on alcohol and the sheer ridiculousness of this, and he was wondering if the other guy was drunk on adrenaline.
About the time one of them would slow down, then wind down to chuckles, the other would start laughing again. The stranger finally grinned and asked, "Equivalent of a formal introduction?"
"Hell, no, at least give me a name if I'm going to sprawl on you in my own kitchen. Are you bleeding?" Duke tried to get a look at the guy's head, wondering if he was going to have to call an ambulance and explain how an intruder got injured.
From the galley door, a voice he'd been hearing all night said, "I'd ask if this is what it looks like, but I can't decide what it looks like." Kastagir stepped in, snagged Duke neatly by shoulder and belt and hauled him upright. He leaned back down and gave the other man a hand up and looked him over. "No. He's not bleeding."
Duke tried to glare at Kastagir, but hell, Kastagir was laughing at him, and Duke was still trying to quit laughing himself. "Don't even try to claim you followed me home to make sure I was sober."
Kastagir just grinned. "You stayed inside the lines." He turned to look at the stranger. "Five minutes. The man was inside for five minutes and you're sprawled under him? What kind of reputation are you going for this time?"
Kastagir made it sound like a scientific inquiry, or politeness, but nothing he was actually interested in. Duke bit a knuckle rather than laugh again. "One where he tellsme hisname. And why he's on my boat."
"Ah. Well, if we're making explanations….?" Kastagir raised an eyebrow, got an amused shrug and a nod. "Well. He's Connor, I'm Kastagir, and this might call for breakfast."
"That's what I thought," Connor agreed, amused. "I'll make the coffee."
Kastagir nodded. "Good." He looked around. "Anything you wanted used up, Duke?"
~ ~ ~ ~
Audrey poured Duke more water. "Now you look like the aspirin is kicking in. Seriously, they set you up, followed you home, broke into your boat, and then they asked you what you wanted for breakfast?"
"Entered, not broke, but yeah. My right hand to God." Duke matched the motion to the words, but winced at his own volume and said more quietly, "They claimed my dad won the boat off Connor's granddad and they were just there to retrieve a box he'd left." Duke leaned back in his chair, coffee in hand, sunglasses on nose, and bruises coming up on forearm and ribs.
"And you believed them?" Audrey gave him a skeptical look, wishing he didn't have the sunglasses on; so many of Duke's tells were around his eyes. She didn't blame him, however. She'd seen bad hangovers before and this one looked like a beauty. "You know, I don't think I've ever seen you drunk."
"Right now, I am never drinking anything stronger than wine again." Duke winced and finished the water. "And no, of course I didn't believe them." He winced again. "Not until they went through my boat and showed me four hidden compartments I hadn't put in."
"Four." Audrey eyed him and decided not to ask for the real number. "Did they find whatever they were after?"
"Yeah, after an argument about whose fault it was, exactly. I must have still been drunk, or they're lousy liars, because I could swear Connor was claiming Kastagir got him drunk -- I can believe that part -- and that meant Kastagir was supposed to remember where the box was."
"So what was in the box?" Audrey asked after a second. She could come back to whether Duke's 'guest' or his grandfather had left the parcel.
"I don't know," Duke muttered. "The bastards knew I never open packages."
Audrey laughed, then patted his shoulder when he winced again. "Sorry. But come on, Duke. They seriously got you with that?"
Duke shrugged a little, starting to grin. "Yes, and then again, no."
Audrey straightened abruptly. "Duke. What did you do?"
"I told them I didn't open packages I deliver. So they either opened it -- or paid up." He shrugged as if it was no big deal, but he looked like a cat who'd stolen a creamery.
"They set you up, they got you drunk, they broke into a boat they may know better than you do, and you haggled with them instead of calling me or Nathan?" Audrey stared at him and shook her head. "And I'm going to have to blame it on you being drunk, aren't I."
"Yeah. Yeah, you are. Besides, it was three, four in the morning. Nah, it's okay. They're not going to come after me." Duke grinned at her. "They gave me a 'We O U'."
"Okay. There'll be fingerprints on it...." She put her mug down, but Duke shook his head, cautiously.
"Don't bother. Connor pulled his gloves on." He leaned back, cautiously. "Damn. I have no idea what got me in the ribs, but something did. His elbow, maybe?"
Audrey ignored that. "And you took an IOU from them?"
Duke shrugged, carefully. "Yeah. It was something I'd have done. I may not know them, Audrey, but I do know guys like them. They'll pay it off when I ask, and giving me an IOU instead of cash was the apology. It was also, 'You don't screw us, we don't screw you.' It'll be fine." He reached for the coffee, more easily now that the aspirin had kicked in. "Besides. They made me latkes."
Audrey looked up from her notes again. "They made you potato pancakes."
"Oh, yeah. They cooked five pounds of potatoes into latkes. Home-made. We were eating them damn near straight out of the pan. I mean, just enough time on the towels to get some of the oil off. Fucking amazing latkes. You know, I didn't know pumpkin butter went on latkes." He looked blissful at the mere thought.
Audrey was starting to understand why Duke had been laughing at the whole thing; she kept wanting to giggle too. "So they make you latkes and everything is forgiven?"
"Hey, home-made latkes aren't something I get every day."
Audrey considered the pile of greasy carbs he must have gone through and just how bad the hangover still was. "I suppose not. What did they do, keep adding this boom-boom to your coffee?"
Duke winced and drank more of his coffee. "No. Just to theirs, but then Connor was whipping cream for Kastagir's Turkish coffee. At least, he says that's where he said he learned to make boom-boom."
Audrey could just picture it. "And since it was, what, five in the morning by then, you said what the hell and added more boom-boom to your coffee anyway?"
Dukes gave her that irresistible, 'Tom Saywer caught at mischief' rueful look. "Hey, I was just going to have to stay up until eight anyway to call Maggie to come in and set up the Gull this morning."
Audrey looked at him. "Whatever time of morning it was, you still didn't call us." When Duke just shrugged, Audrey sighed. "Let me guess. Will I please forget I heard this and not tell Nathan?"
"Well, don't tell Nathan." Duke grinned at her and pushed the French press over for her to refill her mug. "I wouldn't agree to forget it if I was you."
"Uh-huh. Yeah. Give me their descriptions, Duke, and I won't tell Nathan if I can help it. Hey," Audrey raised a hand to forestall him. "I'll mark the envelope as 'Do not open unless Duke vanishes,' okay?"
"Still my favorite cop." He leaned over cautiously and kissed her cheek. "Come on. You're already late and I think I remember how they made the latkes. Call in late and let's go see."
"You want more?" Audrey stared at him. "Okay, that kind of metabolism is completely unfair."
"Nope. I want to seal the bribe for my favorite cop not to tell my less favorite cop, and I want to see if I get it right." Duke grinned at her. "What? Latkes are tricky."
Audrey followed him, already pulling out her phone. "You know Nathan's going to come over to see if I'm serious, Duke."
"Only if you tell him what I'm making. What the hell." Duke shrugged, cautiously, and winced at the mess in his galley. "Fine. Make more coffee, and tell him to keep his voice down."
~ ~ ~ ~
A small cask was waiting on the deck of the Cape Rouge the next morning, with a note that just said, "Hair of the dog for you." As Audrey had half-expected, it didn't have fingerprints either.
The morning after that, Evi came to Haven.
Duke never could decide if the boom-boom had been an omen.
Comments, Commentary, & Miscellanea:
Really, I only meant this to crossover with Connor, but hey, have a two-for-one, read one Highlander, get one Kastagir free? (No. I haven't been drinking. But writing this fic sure felt like it.)
Moonshine is probably the best description for boom-boom. Kastagir hands it out to see what people will do. He also claims he learned the recipe in Turkey, at least in my stories.
And yes. Having gone and checked, Evi showed up before Audrey moved in over the Grey Gull.
Also, canon says Duke won the Cape Rouge from a man and later found out his dad had supplied the Cape for Duke to win. To the best of my knowledge, we don't know how or why his dad had her to begin with.
Last: Personally, I think Audrey and Nathan are tied for favorite law enforcement with Duke, but getting Duke to admit it is tricky.
Hope y'all enjoyed the crack! I had fun writing it!
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