"It's the end of the world as we know it."

[nothingelsematters]

Who: Lorenzo Chevalier, Lincoln Cole and Clint Chevalier
What: Something's wrong
Where: Lorenzo, Lewis and Holly's place
When: Late night following this

Lorenzo knew when something was wrong with Clint. It was like a Sixth Sense or something. But there was also the fact Clint's voice changed. Lorenzo knew he didn't realise that, but it did. A life time of being with Clint through the ups and downs of life, he stonewalled emotion when someone was slipping out of his control. Especially if he couldn't shove it to the back of his mind and distract himself by fucking out the frustration.

It was late when Clint sent a text to see if Lorenzo was awake. He needed to talk to him about something ASAP. It was so late that Lewis was already home from work, showered, sleeping. Holly had gone to bed hours ago. She was teething again and had been restless, so it was a miracle Lorenzo got her down. But Lorenzo hadn't been able to sleep. He lay there staring at the ceiling, then he lay there watching Lewis sleeping soundly. That was when Clint's text came through. Lorenzo knew it was something important. Clint usually dealt with shit on his own, so in the rare cases like this, it was significant.

Lorenzo soon learned that Clint had called Lincoln and told him to meet him there. When Lincoln arrived, he said Clint had been away on business since the evening before. A case of some sort, had been the description. If Lorenzo had already been feeling uneasy, it rapidly multiplied when Lincoln showed up. Suddenly, there was a sick churny feeling in his gut, and he was asking outright what had happened. Lincoln didn't know, but he was clearly as worried as Lorenzo was.

Lorenzo put the kettle on to make tea, though he partly wondered if booze might be necessary. He had seen on Facebook Clint had been boozing. That was no strange occurrence. Clint having a hangover was. He had a high booze tolerance. Always had. Unless he hit straight Scotch aged for a few decades. That was usually his go-to drink when he wanted to write himself off. "Are you still taking it weak, dude?" he asked Lincoln, not wanting to give him anything he couldn't stomach. Why now, after not being able to sleep, did he suddenly feel so weary?

Comments

[imtoofabulous]

Lincoln had cottoned on to something going on with Clint in recent days. Even before that, he had been slightly distracted and occasionally in a shit mood. The thing was, this wasn't foreign for them and their relationship. They both had their moments, neither set out to change the other. But over time, they had inevitably changed with everything that had happened. Like Clint had told him, you can't nearly get murdered and expect to get up the same fucking person.

Like Lorenzo, Lincoln was inevitably concerned something was wrong with Clint. He actually had this knot of anxiety inside that Clint was about to tell them he had cancer or was dying. Anything less than that, Lincoln's irrational fears were dominating over. Initially, it had been a vague concern. He knew Clint. Sometimes he dealt with really awful stuff with his work, and some of those times, he wanted escapism. Drinking, a hell of a lot of fucking, pot, more fucking, etc. Lincoln didn't care about any of that. It was Clint. The only restriction he had put on Clint since they got married was that he was the only bloke he fucked. He could fuck anything with a pussy until the cows came home, but Lincoln wanted to be his exclusive guy. He knew Clint would honor that. He nodded to Lorenzo from where he was sitting at their dining table. Lewis and Lorenzo's place was open plan, so the kitchen, dining area, and living room were all in one big space. "Weak's great. Thanks, mate," he murmured.

[privateinvestigations]

Turned out, it wasn't a good idea to just try to fuel on booze and smokes for a few days, and be so distracted, you forgot to eat. He hadn't done that since Lincoln was first stabbed. It left him passed out in a fucking prison parking lot and rescued by a hooker with fucking crack shoved up her twat trying to smuggle it in. Nice chick, though. She peeled Clint out of the gutter, offered him some towelettes to clean up, and went with him to get a coffee and something to eat at a nearby cafe. That was how he found out she was a crackwhore. She offered him a good price for her pussy on loan. He didn't take it, of course. He had never had to pay for a fuck, and never would. Besides, he was locked in too much of a mindfuck to think straight.

As soon as he was feeling okay-ish enough again, he went back to the airport to board his flight home. He had been half-tempted to hire a car and drive home, trying to let the open road clear his head. He didn't want to delay the inevitable, though. He hadn't slept in three days, so he looked like a wreck when he got to Lorenzo's. At least he thought to pack a bag, so he wasn't in the same clothes for that length of time. He actually showered and changed. He chose not to ring the buzzer because it was late, and Holly would be sleeping. He knocked softly on the door instead, and braced himself to face Lorenzo. Nothing about Lorenzo had changed, but it still suddenly felt like he was facing a stranger. It was the weirdest sensation he had ever experienced, and he used to do 'shrooms.

[nothingelsematters]

Lorenzo was relieved to just see Clint, but also completely and utterly oblivious to why shit was going on for him. When he saw his cousin at the door, he clocked how exhausted he had looked. Clint being tired wasn't so unusual since he had been Lincoln's carer since he was released from hospital. That meant he had sleepless nights sometimes when Lincoln was having a bad day. Clint didn't just go to bed and let his husband suffer in pain and sickness alone. You didn't do that when you were married. Just like Lewis had been up many a night with Lorenzo when the Hep C flared up, or Lorenzo had been up with Lewis when he was having nightmares about his kidnapping. Lorenzo just never thought he'd see the day Clint did all that. Clint had always been the one person people would put money on not doing any of this shit.

He gave Clint a hug when he saw him, and patted his back before leading him inside. "What the fuck's going on? You look like utter shit. We've been worried sick. Don't bullshit around this, either. I think after everything this friggen family has been through, we can lay all cards on the table when they need to be there." He nudged Clint inside so he could take a load off. "Go sit in the living room. We don't need to sit at the table. Are you sure you need to do this tonight? You look like you need sleep, for fuck's sake." He had gone back into the kitchen to collect the teapot and three mugs. He put them down on the coffee table, took a quick return trip for the milk and sugar, and then was back, sitting in the arm chair just across from Clint and Lincoln on the sofa.

[imtoofabulous]

Once Clint approached, Lincoln had stood up, hugging him too, but punctuated it with a kiss. It wasn't a long kiss, by any means, because Lincoln wanted to check Clint over any obvious signs of injuries. Clint wasn't the sort to lie in bed and toss and turn if he couldn't sleep. He would just get up and do stuff, whatever the stuff was. It wasn't uncommon for either of them to lean on sex if insomnia was at play. Neither minded being woken up for that. But Lincoln had a couple of bad days this week, which inevitable meant Clint knew he wasn't up to their general sex life. Lincoln slept a lot when he was ill, and if he wasn't sleeping, he was usually lying down because it was the most comfortable be could get.

Clint hadn't said anything yet, so Lincoln didn't push him. They just sat down together on the sofa and Lincoln was pushing Clint's hair back out of his eyes and looking over his face in concern. He still couldn't shake the awful feeling Clint might be about to drop a devastating bombshell. He hoped not, and he hoped on some level whatever was about to be said here wasn't a tragedy or disaster. He just wanted to take Clint home and go to bed with him, but Clint had insisted they meet at Lorenzo's, and he would be there as soon as he could. He had apologised about it being so late, but said this needed to happen to night, and he didn't want anyone else there. Not yet. "What's going on, love? Please tell me you don't fucking have cancer."

[privateinvestigations]

"Cancer? Fuck, no. It's not cancer. I ain't sick, you don't have to worry, babe. It's alright, don't stress. I need you to not fucking stress with how you've been this week." Fucking cancer. The last thing Clint would have wanted to do was get Lincoln worried about him having something like cancer. He felt like shit hearing that, but he hadn't given anyone any information to work with, so it was natural they tried to fill in their own gaps about how the off the planet he had been in the last few days. But he had to get firm evidence before he could even admit it to himself, let alone talk to anyone else about it. "I ain't sick. It's nothing like that. I can't say it ain't something huge, because it is, but it's got nothing to do with my health. Still the same boozy, sex-addicted fucker that smokes too much that I always have been. This is just... seriously fucking hard."

On the flight home, he had been trying to go over and over in his head how best to broach this with everyone. He was honestly leaning towards not telling anyone else but Lorenzo and Lincoln. That had been the most he had gotten, but he knew that he couldn't expect Lorenzo not to tell Lewis, and not to tell Angela and Emily, who they were having a fucking baby with. A baby who was Lorenzo fucking niece or nephew. He put his hands over his face and had to put his head back against the chair. He had a fucker of a headache that Tylenol hadn't even touched. Soon, he was sitting forward, and for all he tried to start talking about this, he was struggling to know where to start. "Look, I'm just gonna fucking give you what I had to go on, and once you see it, then we can talk about what it means." He took the two birth certificates from his pocket... the fake he had always thought was the original, and the re-issued one from Louisiana State that he had recently applied for. Then finally, the DNA results from Ali. He laid them out on the coffee table in front of them.

[nothingelsematters]

Lorenzo's heart had shot up into his throat when Lincoln mentioned cancer. He hadn't thought about that, so he was relieved as fuck when Clint nipped that one in the bud. He knew it wouldn't be anything like Clint deciding he was having second thoughts on being married or having a kid, because Clint was a man of his world. Lorenzo knew Clint didn't really see himself as destined to have a hands-on involved with the baby, but he also knew that would change once Clint met his kid for the first time. Something in you changes when that happens, and Clint was a cunt, there was no doubt about that. But he wasn't an asshole. He had a big heart, he would literally kill for his family. Things were changing on many levels in their family, but that was inevitable when - not all that long ago - they had been single and basically living to work, and very little else. Or in Lorenzo's case, barely existing as Mara's carer and expecting her to murder him in a psychotic rage one night. That was all in the past now. Literally dead and buried.

There was another force in his life he also assumed was long since dead and buried... his father. So, when he frowned and sat forward to look at what Clint was producing here, and what the fuck it was to render Clint speechless, he didn't expect that particular demon to be rearing it's vile head. And he didn't even realise what it was right up. He was looking, but he wasn't seeing. It didn't make sense why Clint was showing them two copies of his birth certificate, and then what looked like a print out of some sort of medical test. But Clint said he wasn't sick. Was this about the baby? There was no way it couldn't be Clint's. Ange said Clint was the only dude she had fucked in a really, really long time. But it was only then that he spotted the test results had his name printed on them. And Clint's. He picked them up to read them properly now, and saw it was a DNA test. "What is... I don't get," he said at first. He was about to ask if Clint was saying he didn't think they were related, until he took the time to look closer at those birth certificates... and they had two different birth dates and two different names listed as the mother. "This is my birthday. This is... is my mom." Then his eyes widened, mouth dropped open. All he could do then was gape at Clint in shock.

[imtoofabulous]

"What the fuck is this?" Lincoln was demanding. Okay, so he was going to go with the more straight-to-the-point, Clint's-husband route here. You don't love Clint as long as he had, and live with him day and night, and have some of that brashness rub off. Besides the fact, Lincoln was a pretty forceful bitch in his own right. His sassy bitch side was infamous, and maybe the bitch side of that was going to come out stronger here because he was confused and he had no idea what was going on here. Obviously something really huge and shocking, if the look on Lorenzo's face was anything to go by. Huge, but also confusing. What was Lorenzo's birthday and his mom? Was this about her, because if it was, then Lincoln was totally going to pay someone to take that cunt out and get out of Lorenzo's life. He had already tried to cut ties to protect Holly. And Lincoln was a rich bitch. He would do it.

First, he needed to understand what this was. He reached to pick up the pieces of paper. He had the luxury Lorenzo didn't, being that Lorenzo verbalised some clues. He leafed through the three pieces, trying to see what was going on. DNA results, Clint's birth certificate, and... Clint's birth certificate. Wait, what? Where was Lorenzo's mom and birthday coming into all this? Then he, too, saw it. Both certificates had Clint's name, but on one, his birthday and mother was printed there, but on the other, Lorenzo's birthday and mother. No matter how much of a bitch, that one cock-blocked Lincoln's mind too for a few moments. "You were switched at birth? Why would your moms switch you, though? Wait, hang on... they both say Lorenzo's dad. Oh, fuck, are you really brothers?!" he gasped.

[privateinvestigations]

There was so much going on in Clint's head that he wasn't sure he would sift through it all to give the appropriate answers. He was feeling anger unlike he had ever felt before, because it was drenched with betrayal. He had felt the worst anger of his life in the wake of Lincoln being stabbed, but that was vengeance. This was hearing your own fucking mother not just gave you up, but you were a twin, picked him over Clint, and then tried to pass them off as cousins. He had to get out of Louisiana before he did something he regretted. He probably would have found it hilarious to discover he was switched at birth, but it wasn't as easy as that. The penny dropped quicker for Lincoln than Lorenzo, but Lorenzo's mind wasn't looking for any massive anomalies with this picture. Who would be? "Fucking twins," he corrected, and he just stared at the paperwork tiredly.

"The old one is a fake, the new one is state-issued. I fucking applied for it myself. Then when I got it, no shit made sense at all. I was only fucking looking for any evidence that the raping cunt did my mother too. I ain't been able to shake thinking that since Richie came into the picture. So, I started to look deeper. I dunno if I really expected to find anything. Then at the same time, I couldn't fucking shake the feeling that something was wrong. Wouldn't have really put it past the cunt to rape his own sister, considering the vile shit he's done in the past. I wanted to know if I was some sort of spawn of incest for when the kid came along. I just never fucking expected to find this. Still couldn't believe the shit when it came back, so I went to Louisiana to see the bitch in the slammer. She told me fucking everything," he mumbled.

[nothingelsematters]

All Lorenzo could do was sit there in shock, feeling numb. He wanted Lewis there, because he automatically wanted Lewis there for anything that was hard. He wouldn't wake him, though. Lewis had been doing extra work on a movie this past month, so he got quite tired after the weekend, when he did most of his work. It felt like he couldn't process what was happening, because it seemed so fucking ludicrous. Did shit like that actually happen in real life? Well, of course, if it was going to, it was going to be in his life. His eyes moved from the papers on the coffee table for Clint, and he realised as his gaze turned, he was expecting to see someone different staring back at him. They had been inseparable growing up. Even now, they still were close, even for all the time Clint had been absent. But this just didn't make sense. How could it make sense? His mom had twins, but chose to keep one and ditch the other but put them in situation where they still thought they were family? Was she really that fucked in the head? Maybe that was a stupid question. She was in prison for murdering Lorenzo's (and Clint's?) father so viciously that she couldn't even lean on the Battered Person defense.

He was shaking now from the shock, and struggling to form words, let alone get them to come out of his mouth. Soon, he shook his head. "N-No. Who would do that? Who would keep fucking twins away from each other like this? It can't be true. They got to have just mixed our birthday certificates up or something..." He was clutching at straws. He knew from what Clint did that if you had the right connections, you could easily get fake IDs and documents. State Records wouldn't just fuck up not only names, but also birth dates. Clint's birthday had always been April, and Lorenzo's in June. Over two months apart. He was getting teary, and he felt sick all of a sudden. This wasn't right. It couldn't be. But the evidence was right there. He and Clint were an indisputable DNA match, and the officially issued certificate matched their parents and date of birth. "What did she say? What the fuck did that cunt say?"

[imtoofabulous]

Lincoln sat there, watching, stunned, with his hand over his mouth. He couldn't fathom not knowing he was a twin. It was just beyond his realms of comprehension, because being one himself, he couldn't understand why anyone would separate twins. No matter how terrible the situation, why would you not make a choice that kept them together? In a way, they had been sort of together, but didn't know they were even brothers, let alone twins. He didn't say anything. This wasn't his story. But while he sat there, trying to take it in amidst the the shock, he looked closely at both Clint and Lincoln together. Something he probably hadn't ever really done. Sure, who hadn't seen them together? They were always together, but to look at them as twins, you were looking at them in a whole new light. And he could see it. They had the same eyes, sure. Holly had them too, they had apparently come from the paternal grandmother. They weren't identical, obviously. But the striking resemblance had always been there.

Lincoln just couldn't know for a minute how it would feel to be separated from his twin. He had always had one. Sure, he and Emily were far from close anymore. They never really talked one-on-one anymore. He didn't feel the same connection. Maybe you could sever a closeness between twins, but he had always known he was one, regardless. He couldn't even imagine Clint as a sibling, let alone a twin. He had always been a lone ranger, so to speak. However, there was an undeniable connection between Clint and Lorenzo. They had always just put it down to growing up close together. But they would never have anticipated something as freakish as this. "So, you're Hols' uncle?" he finally murmured, when the dots began to connect.

[privateinvestigations]

To hear Lincoln say that out loud had a massive impact on Clint. He looked at his husband, and it did feel like a punch in the got. Not necessarily in a bad way, but in a completely fucking confusing way. One thing he did know was that trying to avoid talking this out would be the worst thing he could do. No matter how much he wasn't a D&M conversationalist, by a long shot, Lorenzo was. And even beyond that, this wasn't something Clint could go about in his normal manner, because it wasn't fucking normal. He got up and went over to sit on the arm rest of Lorenzo's chair, and rested his hand on his back. He couldn't explain it, but he just needed that contact. He feared how much this could change everything, and he feared little in this world. Above all else, right in this moment, he was most worried about Lorenzo, and worried this wasn't news he would want. That was why Clint considered just sitting on it himself, but he knew he never could. In essence, he hoped it didn't change the strength of their relationship.

"Alright," he began and his face was twisting up with disgust as he replayed in his mind the things their apparent biological mother had confessed. "She got fucking knocked up, but he was still obviously belting the shit outta her. He wouldn't let her get pregnancy care or whatever the fuck they called it. She didn't know there was two of us. Not 'til later, when she had someone to adopt us from fucking Maine. I guess they must've paid for care, and she found out there were two. They were gonna take us both. When she had us, I was sick or some shit. Breathing problems. I don't fucking know what. She worried he would kill us because he didn't want two, let alone a fucking damaged kid. She had an adoption planned. But then shit fell out, 'cause my mom... fuck. Um... she wanted to adopt the baby. She was a lesbo way back then, I guess. Had a partner, all that fucking shit. They fell out, 'cause our real cunt mother chose strangers as adoptive parents. Only, when she had has, she couldn't give us up. She still couldn't keep us both. So, my mom kept me, and she kept you, Renz, so she could still see us both, and we wouldn't be separated. There was some shit about the fake birth certificate and knowing someone. But he found out later. That's what she said... that was why she killed him, not in self-defence. He threatened to kill us both to punish her for the fucking lies, so she killed him instead." His hand went to his face, and he was pushing the tip of his fingers into the corners of his eyes when he was tearing up. This was hitting him harder than he ever could've thought.

[nothingelsematters]

This just got worse and worse. Lorenzo felt his stomach turn, feeling like a mixture of being stuck on a rollercoaster and he couldn't get off before he puked, and like an elephant was sitting on his gut and chest. Instead of hurling, though, tears were filling his eyes and they spilled over before he could stop it. He was angry at himself for letting that happen, and roughly wiped at his eyes with his fingers. How the fuck was he supposed to process this? For the entirety of his life, his mother kept this fucking secret from them, and said they were... cousins? How could she do that? Lorenzo knew she was fucked in the head. No matter how decent her intentions, it was born of the fact she probably had a level of neurological damage from how often she had been punched, slammed into walls, kicked, slapped. Lorenzo knew this from the prison doctors he had spoken to after they initially assessed his mother's mental health. She definitely had mental health issues, surrounding the fact she clearly had Battered Person Syndrome. But all that sounded like deluded excuses all of a sudden, because this was completely fucking mental.

He wanted to punch something. He wanted to get on a plane and go shoot her in the fucking face. Not that he would. He wasn't a violent person, and he would never do anything stupid that put himself at risk of being taken from Holly. But anger was a very real part of the grief process. Is that what this was? He was suddenly grieving for the relationship he had never been allowed to have with his brother? His twin? But all the while, the rational part of his brain was trying to remind him that he had had a relationship with Clint all along. But it wasn't the same. He was shaking his head, and when he spoke, his words were shaky too. "Fucking psychotic cunt. Why the fuck am I surrounded by psychotic cunts?!" His mother, then Mara. Both of them, along with his violent father, lead the way to the fact he now had anxiety issues. It was why he could feel himself starting to break down from the inside out when his nerves felt shot hearing all of this. Seeing Clint's tears broke him. He tried to take the high road, be supportive of the shock Clint was trying to process. Instead, he had to get up and bolt to the sink in the kitchen where he was forcefully sick. All this was dragging up all the terrible memories he had of his childhood and he hated it.