#maybe more soon?? idk!

[hydrangeathief]

mob au, introduction part 1

There’s a group of Irishmen, supposedly, who haunt the seedy underbelly of the city. They’re a ghost story told to new beat cops to keep them from going down dark alleys alone at night. They’re identical and deadly and, in some cases, not human. Of course, they’re not real. That would be insane. Wouldn’t it?

(first small installment of what is to become a larger version of the beloved Mob AU, featuring the introduction of everyone’s favorite hectic irish bois)

They got off the boat in the dead of night, on one of the coldest nights of the year, in the middle of a snowstorm that was looking to turn nasty. They had two duffel bags between them. The first held exactly two changes of clothes, a day’s worth of food, and fifty dollars. The second was loaded down with guns.

“Where to now?” Jackie asked, huddling deeper into his thin jacket.

“Anywhere we want,” Anti said around a grin, and the Irish moved into the city.

Anti throws open the warehouse’s thick metal door and storms inside, fuming. He kicks off his boots and leaves them in front of the door. Someone might trip over them later. That’d be funny.

“Jesus, Anti, had a bad day or something?” Chase asks from the couch. He has his feet up on the coffee table, and normally Anti wouldn’t mind, but today he’s in the mood to pick as many fights as possible. He crosses the room in a proverbial whirlwind of fury and aggressively knocks Chase’s feet to the floor with the back of one hand.

“Take better care of our shit,” he grumbles. “We can’t exactly replace it easily.”

“We could totally replace it,” Chase says, eyebrows raised. “We’re drowning in cash.”

“Yeah, Chase, let’s just go out shopping. A whole gaggle of identical fugitive Irish men would fit in so well at the local mall. Good idea,” Anti gripes, and moves toward the refrigerator while yanking his shirt off over his head. The warehouse has no walls, no rooms, no separate kitchen and living room and bedrooms. There is only a main floor space and a small loft, and they’re not really that big on needing privacy anyway. Their bodies are the same. They’ve all seen it all before.

“Must have been a really bad day,” Chase muses. Anti opens the fridge door a bit too violently, and there’s a sudden pop. The door hangs loosely on bent hinges and Anti makes a sound that can only be described as a shriek of rage. He glitches wildly.

“Fuck,” Anti hisses. The gash on his neck has opened back up and is bleeding freely onto his shirt, which until that moment had been a rather nice soft gray. He presses a hand to it in an effort to staunch the flow, but it doesn’t do much.

Chase sighs and moves to stand up. “I’ll find Schneep. Just don’t bleed everywhere while I wake him up.”

Fortunately, Henrik must have been napping more lightly than Chase previously thought, and doesn’t need to be found in the first place. He bounds down the stairs from the loft with a needle and thread in hand, expression unworried.

“Sit still,” he says gently, and Anti glowers but tilts his head back. It doesn’t take long to stitch the wound closed, but it’s anyone’s guess how long it’ll stay that way. He tends to glitch when he’s upset, and the neck wound won’t stay healed no matter what they do. If his expression is any indication, they’ll likely be stitching him back together a few more times before sundown.

“There,” Schneeplestein says. “Fixed. Try to keep it that way, hm?”

Anti takes a deep breath and makes a face like he’s swallowing a mouthful of rocks. “Thank you.”

“What even happened today, bro?” Chase asks.

Anti’s expression darkens, and he says, “Get the others down here.”

It takes a few minutes to get everyone together, but eventually their weird little band of misfit toys is in one place. Jackie, Marvin, Chase, and Schneep cram themselves onto the couch, despite the fact that it’s probably only technically big enough for two people. Robbie sits on the threadbare rug at their feet, and Anti swings one of the kitchen chairs around to straddle facing them.

“So, I saw Dark today,” he beings.

The others begin talking all at once, at varying levels of intensity.

“Dark? Like, our Most Dangerous Enemy, Dark?” Chase demands.

Anti fixes him with a glare. “No, Chase, our loving cuddly ally, Dark. What do you think?”

“I didn’t know he was in town,” Marvin says. There’s suddenly a deck of cards in his hands, which he shuffles with frightening speed. He pulls out an ace, hands it to Jackie, and shuffles again. He pulls out that same ace and hands it to Jackie. He shuffles the deck again and pulls out two more copies of the same ace.

“Hey, Marv, maybe tone it down with the nervous habit,” Chase says, but he says it gently. Marvin blushes and puts the cards away.

“It’s not him being in town that’s the problem,” Anti continues. “It’s the rest of them.”

“Are ze rest of zem in town too?” Schneeplestein asks.

Anti sighs and runs a hand through his hair. He flickers, ever so slightly, but manages to keep himself in one piece for the time being.

“I saw Warfstache with him. If they’re both around, you bet the others are lurking somewhere,” he says.

“What do we do about it?” Jackie asks. He’s still holding the four identical aces.

“Business as usual,” Chase says decisively.

“Don’t go anywhere without a gun, and do not go alone,” Henrik adds. The others stare at him, but he crosses his arms over his chest and sets his jaw. “I can only fix so much. Death is irreversible.”

They all pointedly do not glance at Robbie.

“Anyway, that was my shit encounter of the day. I’m going to sleep,” Anti says, and gets up to head for the stairs to the loft. He flops onto the nearest bed, despite the fact that it’s actually technically Chase’s bed, and is asleep before anyone can follow and ask him to move.