Snitches get Stitches - A Mulvaney Family Barbeque (Patreon)

A mini-fic that has nothing to do with the prompts but is just something I wanted to write for you guys. Hope you enjoy. “We’re not mad,”

A mini-fic that has nothing to do with the prompts but is just something I wanted to write for you guys. Hope you enjoy.

“We’re not mad,” Lucas said, struggling to keep his voice calm. “We just want to know who showed you that?”

The girl’s eyed him warily, taking a step back towards their baby brother’s playpen, eyes darting to Jett and Jagger who sat a foot to their right on the pool chair, both looking surprisingly docile for preschoolers.

All the Mulvaney’s were gathered around the second pool at the mansion for the annual July 4th barbeque, and were dressed appropriately so the family gathering could be heavily documented on social media, showing the world how boringly normal they all were.

Except they weren’t. Lucas eyed his children warily, his knees screaming from kneeling on the hard surface beneath. How had his beautiful, stunning, doll-like children become such little monsters?

They stood, pigtails askew, hands clasped, looking festive in their red, white and blue dresses, staring down at their handiwork.

Lucas had to remind himself to breathe in and out slowly. He wasn’t lying. He wasn’t mad at his precious baby girls, with their dark hair and huge jade green eyes. It wasn’t their fault they were being raised in a house full of goddamn psychopaths.

It was his.

It was his fault for falling in love with the most beautiful, most intelligent, most terrifying psychopath of the whole Mulvaney family. It was his fault for letting him put a ring on it. It was his fault for breeding with him and not being more careful about whose genetic material ended up winning the race to Cricket’s eggs.

Someone snickered from behind him. He snapped his head around glaring at each of them in turn. Cricket stood in a navy blue bathing suit and a white sarong, not looking nearly as bothered as she should about her children’s budding psychopathy. August was in swim trunks and nothing else, a detail that snagged his brain away from the problem at hand longer than it should have. Long enough for his husband to hook one dark brow up and smirk.

Asshole.

Adam and Noah were behind him. It was probably Adam who’d laughed. Jericho sat on the pool chair next to his children, Atticus perched between his knees wearing a long sleeved sun shirt that matched Jett’s, zinc smeared across his nose, also like Jett. Despite not sharing a single drop of blood, Jett somehow looked just like Atticus and Jagger looked just like Jericho. Maybe there was such a thing as fate. How else could two such perfect siblings fall into their laps?

Felix and Zane were also in attendance, Zane wore plain black swim trunks and a tank top with Asa’s company logo emblazoned on it. Felix wore white linen pants, a red crop top and a white cardigan, his hair pulled back in a ponytail. From a distance, he looked impeccable, but Lucas’s gaze went straight to the spit up stain on his shoulder. A gift from either West or Oscar.

Today, they’d dressed Oscar in navy and West in red, which helped all those who didn’t see them every day, tell them apart quicker than checking to see which of their pudgy baby faces was slightly leaner. Oscar had come out a whole two pounds bigger than West, despite them being identical.

Oscar squawked indignantly from where he was perched on Felix’s hip, facing outward like he’d been caught mid-run. Zane held West, who was a much more willing captive, his head resting on Zane’s shoulder, his thumb in his mouth. They weren’t a year yet, but both were already walking. Much to their fathers’ dismay.

Lucas turned back to his own two tiny felons. “Did your uncles teach you this?”

Adelyn’s gaze slid to Arabella’s and they stared at each other in that way that told Lucas they were communicating silently. Arabella, despite being wrestled into the world six minutes after her sister, was almost always the ringleader of whatever shenanigans the Mulvaney children got into, and Adelyn always looked to her for guidance.

Christ, they were August’s children through and through.

Lucas sighed. “You know I could just reach out and touch you and know everything you’ve done, right?”

That cracked the surface a tiny bit, the girl’s breaking eye contact with each other before Arabella said, “But snitches get stitches.”

Adam barked out a laugh. There was the sound of skin slapping skin and then Adam yelped. “What? It’s not my fault it’s funny when little kids say weird shit like that.”

“It’s not weird. It’s psychotic,” Noah said in the world’s worst stage whisper.

Adam snorted. “Well, yeah, their dad’s a psychopath. The worst of us.”

Lucas looked back just in time to catch August leveling a malicious look at his brother, before dropping into a crouch beside the girls.

“Who taught you that?” August asked. When the girls started to look at each other once more, August put his hand between them at eye level, voice lowering into that low tone he used to let the girl’s know he was displeased.  “We’ll know if you’re lying. And you don’t want to lie to us.”

Unfortunately, it was also the voice he used with Lucas when he was very much not displeasing him, which often made listening to August discipline their children…uncomfortable.

Adelyn kicked the toe of her sandal against the terrazzo tile surrounding the pool.

“Is it really worth missing dessert?” Lucas asked, voice stern.

“It was me.”

Lucas and August looked over at four-year-old Jagger, who sat in his oversize chair with his brother, face as placid as lake water.

“You taught them this?” August asked, pointing to the doll on the ground.

Jagger shook his head. “No. I taught them that snitches get stitches.”

“Snitches end in ditches,” Jett added, folding his arms over his chest and making a mean face.

Atticus leveled a glare at Jericho, who held his hands up. “Don’t look at me like that, freckles. I didn’t teach them that.” He looked at Jagger. “Where did you two hear that?”

“That’s what Nico told Seven,” Jagger said.

“Nico told Seven that snitches get stitches?” Atticus said, looking at Jericho with a smug expression. “I told you taking them to the garage every day so Ever could watch them was going to end up being a problem. But no, you said private school would teach them to be elitist pric-brats,” he corrected as Jett, Jagger and the girls turned to him with big eyes .

“And I stand by that,” Jericho said. “Look at you and your brothers. Snobs, every one of you.”

Atticus scoffed. “Your brother is wearing a crop top that costs more than our mortgage payment. In the city. ”

Felix preened. “It’s my job to look fashionable. Nobody wants to buy clothes made by someone wearing—” he shuddered— “chinos.”

“Those boys are delinquents,” Atticus said, wagging his finger like the know-it-all he was.

“Yeah, well they’re our delinquents,” Jericho told him. “No take backs. When you married me, you married the muppets. For better or worse, freckles. Besides, they’re right. Snitches do get stitches.” To the kids, he said, “First rule of the Mulvaney family?”

“We don’t talk about the Mulvaney family!” they all shouted as one.

Allister clapped his chubby baby hands from where he stood in his playpen. “Yeah,” he added in his shrill baby voice, then clapped some more. Yeah was his new favorite word.

Lucas still had hopes for his youngest. So far, he’d shown no signs of psychopathy or psychometry. He was just a sweet, normal, slightly neurotic two-year-old.

The neurosis wasn’t his fault though. Adelyn and Arabella acted as though he was their baby, carting him around the playroom, dressing him up in their doll clothes, forcing him to attend tea parties he had never RSVP’d to. It would make any toddler jumpy.

They did the same thing whenever West, Oscar or Theo were in the nursery. They just loved babies. They were very sweet girls. They truly were.

His gaze dragged to the doll on the ground, dread pooling in his stomach.

He hoped.

Thomas pushed his way through the family, stopping short when he saw the doll. “What happened here?” he asked, frowning.

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” August said, without looking back at his father.

Thomas hunkered down, taking in the crime scene. The bedraggled soaking wet doll, the wet washcloth over her face, the red plastic beach bucket half full of pool water.“Did they-”

“Waterboard their Cabbage Patch doll?’ August said. “Yeah, yeah, they did. We’re just trying to figure out who taught them to do that.”

“Who knew the cabbage fields were so dangerous,” Adam quipped, earning another slap from Noah. “Stop doing that,” he said, rubbing the spot.

“Then stop saying stupid things,” Noah shot back.

“I think you’re aiming too high,” Felix muttered.

“Stop saying unhelpful things,” Noah corrected.

“Better,” Zane said.

Lucas narrowed his eyes, doing a mental headcount. “Where are the twins?”

“Which ones?” Zane asked. “We’re up to three sets. We pop out identical twins at a statistically improbable rate considering how none of the parents are related.”

“Twin genes are passed by the mother anyway,” August said, earning a glare from Lucas. “What? You can’t expect someone to say the word statistics and me not to interject. It’s…impossible.”

That was hardly the point.

To Zane and Felix, Lucas said, “Where are your husbands? This has the murder twins' names written all over it.”

“Asa! Avi,” Zane shouted, shifting West’s weight from his left hip to his right. “Where are you? Lucas is right. This is so you.”

The twins exited the house in their Gemini swim trunks and matching ugly Hawaiian shirts that neither had bothered to button. They carried trays full of raw meat to the grill, looking at them all curiously before gingerly setting down the food.

When Asa saw Zane’s livid expression, he blanched. “What? What did I do?” To Avi, he said, “What did I do? I was in the house the whole time?”

“Did you show the girls how to waterboard someone?” Zane snapped.

“Oh, that,” Asa said, picking up the spatula and waving it in a sweeping gesture. “Yeah. No. That was me. They were doing it all wrong.”

Lucas stood, glaring at Asa. “What?”

“They were doing it all wrong,” he said, louder as if that was why Lucas was asking him to repeat himself. “They were pouring the water too fast. Right, girls?”

Lucas looked back to see his sweet girls nod in unison, looking like the creepy twins out of The Shining movie. Christ.

August gave him a tight smile. “You’re going to leave me, aren’t you? You’re going to leave me and take the kids.”

Lucas rolled his eyes, but blew him a kiss. He didn’t want August worrying about ridiculous things like that. He didn’t need anymore neurospicy meltdowns at family gatherings.

“What did we learn?” Avi shouted.

“Do it slowly or you can’t interrogate them for information,” they repeated in sync.

“Wow,” Lucas said, dragging the word out, hoping it in some way relayed his sheer exasperation with Asa and Avi.

“I know, they’re smart, right?” Avi said, looking proud.

Lucas glowered at him. He didn’t know what Avi was so smug about. One of his children was currently eating Zane’s hair and the other was either filling his diaper or solving a complex math equation. He hadn’t even begun to know the true hell that was raising a mini-Mulvaney, especially two at a time.

“I don’t know whether to be creeped out or proud,” Felix said, lifting his son to sniff his butt, before recoiling. “Oof. I don’t know how to say this without hurting your feelings, but you stink, bro.”

Oscar let out a string of mindless babble then clapped his hands. Felix rubbed his nose against the baby’s. “Listen, you don’t get to give yourself a round of applause just for pooping in your diaper. All the other baby’s can do that. Even your brother. Even your cousin, Theo and he’s only six months old. If you want to impress me, maybe do it in a potty.”

“Don’t listen to him, buddy. Good job,” Avi shouted, giving the ten month old a thumb’s up.

Adam snorted, then attempted to muffle his laughter as he ducked away from his husband. “What, it's funny.”

Asa grinned, slapping meat on the grill. “He’s right. It’s a little funny. No?”

Lucas scoffed. “Just wait until Oscar and West are garroting their GI Joe’s or hanging their stuffed animals from the ceiling fan by nooses. Then we can talk.”

Felix shuddered. “GI Joe’s in my house? Never.”

“Dude, do you know how proud I would be if my six-year-old knew how to tie a noose,” Aiden said, strolling out onto the porch. “Like that is some advanced knotting techniques.” To Thomas, he said, “I wonder how young he’d have to be for us to start teaching him the basics? Maybe sailing? They teach knots in boating classes right?”

“I told you private school made your brothers pretentious,” Jericho said, pointing at Aiden. “Even he wants his kid to take up…boating.”

“I just really hope Aiden’s really dedicated to raising the next set of vigilantes, and he’s not implying that Dad’s into like shibari or something,” Noah said, looking green around the gills.

“Can we all fucking focus on the issue at hand, please?” Lucas asked, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Papa, he said a bad word,” Jagger whispered, eyes wide. “Does he have to put money in the swear jar like you?”

“Yes,” Jericho assured him.

“What is the issue, Lucas? So they waterboarded their Cabbage Patch doll. Maybe she had it coming,” Felix said.

Lucas rolled his eyes. “It doesn’t matter what her crimes were.”

“Now, that’s not true,” August said. He turned back to his daughter. “So, what was it? What did she do to deserve such a fate?”

Adelyn stood up super tall, her little face full of righteous fury. “She beheaded Ken and put his head in Barbie’s oven in her dream house because Ken said they couldn’t be together anymore. She deserved to die, right, Uncle-Grandpa Aiden?”

Adam’s laughter broke through the hand over his mouth as Aiden leveled a glare at him. “Did you teach them that?”

“You can just call him grandpa,” Lucas said, though even he had to admit calling a forty-four year old grandpa was weird. But Thomas also seemed far too young to have as many grandchildren as he did. Especially with his own newborn upstairs.

“But Uncle Adam said that Aiden’s his brother and granddad’s husband so that makes him uncle-grandpa Aiden, right, Adam?” Arabella said.

Aiden took a few menacing steps towards Adam, who ducked behind Noah, using him as a shield. He pinched Noah’s face in one large hand. “You can’t beat me up. You wouldn’t want to accidentally hurt Noah, right? Look at this sweet face.”

“You’re deranged,” Lucas muttered. “All of you.”

August took the girl’s hands. “You’re not in trouble.” He cleared his throat, giving Lucas and Jericho a look that said I can’t believe this is my life. “If your Cabbage Patch Doll—”

“Beatrice,” Jett supplied helpfully.

“Beatrice,” August said. “Indeed beheaded Ken and left his head in the oven for Barbie, then she did have it coming, but you know you can’t punish people for a crime if you can’t prove they did it beyond a reasonable doubt. Did you have that proof?”

Arabella, Adelyn and Jagger all nodded.

“We sawed her do it,” Jett said.

“Saw,” Atticus corrected absently.

Jett narrowed his eyes at his father. “Dat’s what I say. We saw’d him.”

“I mean, hey if they sawed Beatrice do it, she had to go,” Adam said. “She met the code.”

Thomas sighed, standing to throw an arm around Aiden’s shoulders. “Adam’s right. If you know in your heart it was the right thing to do, then that’s the end of it, right, Lucas?”

Lucas sighed. They had followed the code. What else could they do but teach them the real Mulvaney family legacy? He looked to August, who nodded.

August made eye contact with each of his daughters. “But you cannot do anything like this in front of outsiders. Ever. Do you understand?”

“Not even Ever?” Jagger asked. “Or Levi?”

Jericho picked his son up and settled him between him and Atticus. “They’re not outsiders. They’re family. But everyone else. Nobody outside of the family. Got it?” Jagger and Jett both nodded solemnly, Jett crawling into Atticus’s lap and making himself at home.

Atticus cuddled him against his chest like it was the most natural thing in the world. Who would have thought Atticus would take so well to being a dad? Of course, he’d gotten to skip the colic and the dirty diapers.

August looked to the girls. “Do you understand?”

They both nodded as well.

“What’s our motto?” August asked.

“We only hurt people who hurt others,” the four recited back.

“And?”

“Never animals or children,” they finished.

“What the hell did I miss?” Lola asked, taking West from Zane and kissing his soft baby cheek.

Lola didn’t take on any kind of motherly role with Oscar or West, that was most definitely reserved for Zane and Felix. She said she was perfectly content to mother Dimitri and Arlo with Calliope. But that didn’t stop her from lavishing affection on all the Mulvaney babies.

“Where’s Calliope?” Zane asked.

“Nursing Theo,” Lola said absently. Calliope had not felt the same way. While she wasn’t actively raising the babies, she did play wet nurse for them. She’d said it was just practical, but Lucas was sure she liked having that bond with Theo even if he wasn’t biologically hers.

“Where’s Dimitri and Arlo?” Felix asked. “Why didn’t they come?”

“They’re with the other murder muppets. They said something about grilling hot dogs and setting off fireworks on the roof of Jericho’s shop,” Lola said. “I figured you knew?”

Felix shrugged. “Maybe I did. Fireworks are too loud for Bingus and Bongus here,” he said, patting each of them on their silky baby heads.

“What did you call my precious baby god-children?” Lola asked, snuggling Bong-er, West closer to her.

“That’s what we call them at home,” Zane explained. “Oscar and Westwood just seem like really big names for such tiny, little guys.” When Oscar reached for him, Zane took him absently. “So we call them Bingus and Bongus because those are the names of the cats on the videos they like on YouTube.”

“Your ten-month-olds watch cat videos on YouTube?” Noah asked.

“As opposed to what?” Asa asked. “Fox News?”

“Aren’t there like…kid’s shows? Barney or Doc McStuffins?” Noah asked.

Felix arched a brow at him. “You sure you don’t want your own kids? You’d finally have someone to watch cartoons with.”

“He has me,” Adam said. “Stop trying to induct us into your cult of parenthood. We’ll just borrow your crotch-fruit whenever we start to think we want kids.”

“If you ever call my children crotch-fruit again, you’re going to find your crotch unable to propagate. Or whatever farming metaphor works for me castrating you,” Felix said.

“Seriously, though. What did I miss?” Lola asked.

Calliope appeared, holding baby Theo, who was dressed in the world’s most adorably dorky sailor suit. “What’s happening,” she asked, snuggling up to Lola.

West reached down and grabbed a handful of Theo’s collar attempting to put it in his mouth, grunting when the fabric wouldn’t give.

“Alot,” Noah said.

“Give us the Cliff’s Notes version,” Calliope said, staring at the four kids in the center of a bunch of adults. “Cause this is starting to look a little like the Salem witch trials.”

“Or Children of the Corn,” Lola said with a shiver.

Adam sighed. “Beatrice beheaded Ken and put his head in Barbie’s oven in her Malibu dream house. The girl’s then hunted down Beatrice, waterboarded her and took their revenge.”

Lucas turned slowly to Adam, narrowing his eyes at him. “How do you know it’s Barbie’s Malibu dream house and not her townhouse, Adam?”

Adam’s eyes got big, like he realized he’d made a mistake. “Shit. Listen,” Adam said, holding up his hands. “It’s my job—as the cool uncle—to create these realistic—albeit disturbing—scenarios in order for them to learn how to handle themselves in a crisis. You should be thank—”

Lucas shoved Adam with both hands, receiving a slight sense of satisfaction at hearing hit the water, then sputter to the surface, his hair standing in spikes like a cockatoo.

“Real mature, Lucas. I thought you were the adult here,” Adam called as Lucas walked back to his husband, giving Adam the finger as he did.

“Papa,” Adelyn said. “Daddy just pushed Adam in the pool. Is he gonna be in time-out?”

August chuckled. “No, darlings. That is what we in the Mulvaney family call karmic justice.”

“Oh,” the girls said in unison.

“Oh, indeed,” August agreed, giving Lucas a hard kiss. “Let’s go eat.”