"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?

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[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.