okay, so i was thinking about tam and his alcoholism again, and i was kind of thinking about why he realized he had a problem. like i doubt he was wrecking shit and ruining families or anything, but there kind of had to be a reason he felt like he had to stop. and i guess that reasons is he would black out and end up in alternate universes, and it's been years since he could really control the power so it would be hard to find his way back home, and sometimes he'd be stuck somewhere for weeks and not all universes are rainbows n sunshine or anything.
(tangent: i was thinking about how much tam is like grantaire, and then i got carried away and had him at one point end up in an au!les mis kind of universe and meet an enjolras and fall in love with him, and ya.)
anyway, at one point tam ends up at the serpent because everyone ends up at the serpent eventually, and francisco is tending the bar and is like "you look troubled son," and tam kind of just vents about his life and shit. and they end up talking about their weird universe-traversing powers and francisco explains how he established the serpent, and then the more tam comes back the more interested he becomes in the idea. and that's how he kind of realizes he should get his life together a lil bit, and that's when he comes back home and has his addiction crisis. and then a sober month later, he goes back to the serpent and tells francisco he wants to start a sort of branch of the serpent, so he and francisco go back to the 309 (but in the 70s bc of reasons and also in 309!boston) and build another universal pit stop that's less of a bar and more of a cafe, and surprise surprise that's the start of bkryAU
of course tam can't stick around though, ends up putting some other people in charge (other people who over time become eldritch horrors),
(tbh i'm also using this to explain a lot of things like why anyone even works there, and who are their customers, and other plot related things.)