#mix two great aus: childhood bff au and monster au

[samwise1548]

More baby Martin and baby moth!jon

Ft. the early stages of martins decent towards becoming a Web avatar (/j)

[jojen-hewitt]

“Better luck next time.”

Bank Robber AU for @ambiguous-eyepatch for the Valentines @aftgexchange!

I had a lot of fun drawing these and I hope you like it! 😃

I realized too late that this wasn't exactly what you meant by your prompt, sorry about that, but I hope it's still okay!

The rest of my mini-fic/headcanons/ramblings about this AU are below the cut:

Okay, so right off the bat I got a little carried away with this AU and its way longer than I thought it'd be, so tldr version; Andrew and Neil are rival thieves who sometimes help each other out. Neil gives fake names, Andrew finds him interesting. Two finger salutes are used back and forth. The others make appearances. Neil's a little shit to Riko. Totally impractical, illegal, and very convenient scenarios ensue. Exactly what you'd expect from what was supposed to be a Bank Robber AU but turned more into a Cat Burglar AU. Again, sorry about that!

So, *rolls up sleeves*

Andrew, Aaron, and Nicky are a gang of thieves (Aaron is the tech/medic guy, Andrew's the thief, Nicky is usually the distraction/get away driver). The three of them have been doing this since the twins were in high school. ("It's expensive raising two twin boys as a single parent. Especially when one has expensive tastes in cars and the other wants to be a doctor!" "For the last time Nicky, stop telling people we're your kids!!")

Although Andrew has been doing this on his own for a while (it's how he got himself thrown into juvie)

Neil takes to becoming a thief after his mom died. They still went on the run because they stole from his father, so he thought that would be the best way to keep up some kind of income. He changes name and appearance to avoid police and his father (heads up now, this is the last time Nathan's mentioned, didn't know how else to add him).

Neil threw his outfit together at a thrift store (Orange was the only colour of bandana left, ok).

Andrew of course bought nice, expensive, dark clothes that can blend easily in a crowd. Also to make him look ninja like, not like anyone but Nicky would dare to admit it though.

These two first meet at the Hernandez Museum in Arizona. Neil tries to steal a painting; Andrew whacks him in the gut with his poster portfolio before grabbing the painting and high tailing it outta there, (Not before he gets a fake name from Neil (probably Stefan)),

"Better luck next time." *two finger salute*

As Neil moves on to South Carolina, sometimes the orange gets recognized, so the papers have taken to calling him The Fox ("Really, Matt? That's what they call him?" "Yeah, you know, orange face mask and he's a thief. Dan came up with it. Makes sense if you ask me.")

Side note, Neil is Matt's new roommate and Matt has no clue what's going down, but accepts that his roomie runs at weird hours and prefers to keep things surface level in conversation. They're still bffs during the day when their schedules intersect.

Dan, the investigative reporter interested in this string of robberies, lives with Renee next door to the cousins, those shifty looking guys who are always angrily whispering in German at each other and coming and going at weird times, but Nicky seems nice enough and Dan thinks Renee has a thing for Andrew, (she does not, they just spar together once a week, and Renee may or may not teach Andrew some lock picking techniques... maybe), so they let it go. 

Allison is a close friend of the girls and owns some of the valuables/buildings that get targeted. She's sort of confused when some of these items return a few weeks after Dan reports about them stolen, with a fox sticky note attached

(Neil may steal for a living, but he feels bad when he finds out some of that stuff is hers, so returns the more sentimental items. Andrew does not.)

Kevin is the detective trying to catch these thieves with his new partner - Andrew, who uses info to get a good location/hit or cover his trail. (also puts that criminal justice degree to some use).

*I debated making Kevin a security guard but liked the idea of Andrew being his partner while also being the criminal they're trying to catch dynamic better*

Kevin eventually joins up with Andrew's crew because Riko (Kevin's old partner, also on the robberies case) just took things way too far and sort of snapped, almost injuring Kevin. He won't take part in the robberies himself, but he'll help give a lead or distract the attention of the other officers when Andrew needs it. (He just wants Andrew to help keep him from Riko again.)

Kevin takes his job very seriously, but when he finds out Neil, an old childhood acquaintance, is The Fox he warns him to run before more trouble starts up with Riko (Neil does not, he's found a life here, even if some of its a lie, and he's gonna fight for it).

Kevin starts drinking around this time. (seriously, all he wanted was to be a good detective like his mom and dad, now he's covering for two thieves he's supposed to be apprehending for lord knows what reason)

Seth is a security guard who Nicky takes great pleasure in knocking out (he overheard the guy said some shitty things about gay people while they were staking out the place earlier)

Erik is the cousins' international seller.

Wymack is the police chief/commissioner and doesn’t get paid enough.

Now back to the thieving.

Neil keeps running into this guy at his heists and it turns into a sort of one sided rivalry of Neil trying to case the joint before Andrew gets there.

It barely works, Andrew always beats him there, but he gets better at it. (and someone would be lying if they said Andrew doesn't wait sometimes to see if the Fox shows up)

Neil's taken to calling Andrew the Monster because Allison hates whoever keeps stealing her stuff (also, getting hit by a portfolio tube hurts, Andrew, of course he's gonna think you're a monster at first) but after one time he hears Aaron yelling over Andrew's earpiece, he extends the title to "the Monsters".

which is also roughly when Andrew gives him some sort of name in return to Neil's alias (Chris this time around) because this has been going on for months now.

Andrew eventually makes a deal with him to help each other out because this thief is a train wreck and is gonna get them caught eventually (Andrew will keep the police off his tail and Neil just has to help Andrew with some of the trickier robberies).

Andrew tends to chat a little with this weird Fox named Alex or Stefan or Chris or Duncan or whoever he is today, just 'cause these robberies have started to bore him, but this,

this guy is something interesting

And they start to learn little seemingly inconvenient things about each other

("Oh, there's knives in those? Good to know." "Your mom's dead? Same for my brother. Paid for my car." "Favourite color is grey actually!" "You're more a raccoon than a fox." "Actually my family never celebrated holidays. What brings you to a jewelry store on Thanksgiving?" "I don't like being touched." "Tell your friend that I can in fact understand what he's saying in German... And fuck him too." "Ice cream is the best goddamn food in the world and I will gut you for saying otherwise!")

... Ok, last one is more context than verbatim, but you get the point...

As he gets better, Neil starts to leave little fox sticky notes behind with insults towards Detective Moriyama (because fuck that guy, he keeps bad mouthing The Fox in the news and saying it'd be easy to catch "an amateur like this flea"!!)

Kevin and Andrew have mini heart attacks when they find them ("why agree to my protection when you clearly have a death wish?!")

Eventually, Neil has perfected the art to the point where he can get the item/money before Andrew arrives, but against his better judgement (and the screams of his mother in his head to "Just run! Run! Get out of there while you can!") he stays, even just to leave Andrew with a new fake name.

One of these nights Neil almost gets caught by Riko on patrol, (who is still rather enraged by the last note; how does the Fox even know about his daddy issues?), so he has to change his appearance last minute to not get recognized on the streets.

Matt is the most surprised by the new auburn hair and blue eyes, but again, he rolls with it. Recommends that his girlfriend's roommate is really good with dying hair if he wants to mix it up again though.

Andrew and Aaron get into some trouble (*cough*Drake*cough*) so the Monsters are out of commission for a while.

Neil feels slightly responsible (somehow his tip off to Andrew leads to it, I don't know).

They haven't seen each other since that night.

Andrew eventually gets back into the swing of things ("Andrew are you sure..?" "Yes Nicky, now get in the fucking car.")

One night Kevin gets him a tip off about an opportunity at the EVRMR Private Bank (inside info from Jean who just so happens to hate working there and the Moriyamas, who own the place).

So as Andrew makes his way to the roof, he hears something below (hurried foot steps from all too familiar worn out shoes below) and he takes a glance and sees a flash of orange.

And there's that bothersome shadow who was only supposed to be a brief distraction from routine,

but now he's got a slightly new look and what appears to be a duffle full of what's supposed to be Andrew's cash.

Neil senses eyes on him and sees a figure on the roof and just knows.

Cue two finger salute. "Better luck next time!!"

And he's gone.

(Andrew still checks the vault and finds a fox sticky note that says 'Abram')

*cue Aaron's screams of annoyance and Nicky's demands to know if this guy is at least hot if they keep letting him take their marks*

(Kevin probably is downing a vodka bottle somewhere, but that's a given)

Next day, Riko is out for blood. Jean eventually quits and goes to work at the Trojan Bank.

Later, Dan decides to throw a house party for reasons (maybe a successful article? Matt got a promotion? A doomed attempt to get Renee and Andrew together?)

Renee calmly asks Andrew to come and he agrees for the sake of free booze (also Nicky has been making annoying puppy dog faces at the door ever since Dan asked him and he had to say no)

He's bored and tired and hates that his boss and Kevin are there

(Dan spends so much time hounding the police station for stories that Wymack has essentially adopted her)

Then Matt comes in with a quiet, auburn haired roommate called Neil.

That's when things start to get interesting.