Please see AN at the end.
Lincoln forlornly lay on his bed, trying to read one of his Ace Savvy comics despite having read the same panel three times. He had known that Clyde was going to be traveling the country with his family for the first few weeks of summer vacation, but it still didn't ease his depression. It was the first day of the break from school but it felt like the worst time in his life. He finally gave up trying to finish the comic, opting instead to put it away. He threw on some clothes, choosing to make his way downstairs to see if the t.v. was free. Luna's music was blasting from the other side of her door, so he knew she was too busy. He started down the stairs only to see Lisa heading up, so she wasn't going to be a part of the brawl. He looked then into the kitchen after hitting the bottom to see that Luan was busy with making pies for jokes and routines. All he had to do was just avoid her and he was golden. A smile joined his face only to leave when he directed his attention to the couch, noticing that Lynn was laying on it, enjoying some sport that was on.
Lincoln sighed, making it his resolve to head back and try to read his comic again. Lynn heard him, only to turn her head before grabbing his attention.
"Oh, hey Lincoln," she greeted before inquiring further into his distress, "So, what's wrong?" He turned back, a bit surprised that she was curious about his problems.
"Well," he gave, making his way to take a seat on the couch, Lynn adjusting so that he could have a seat, "It's just that Clyde is gone for a few weeks, so I've got nothing to really do." He lowered his head, letting it fall into his hands. She sat there listening, wondering.
"Really?" was all she gave in reply. She knew that Clyde was going away for a bit but it never occurred to her that maybe it would have such a massive effect on her little brother. Lincoln didn't pick up on the slight tone change in her voice.
"I'm sorry for bothering you during one of your games," he apologized, making for the trip back to his room. Lynn stopped him from getting off the couch.
"No, it's okay, really," she said, leaving him to freeze over in shock. He looked at her to see if she was really serious; well, that or if he was suffering some sort of stroke, only to wonder ever further when she said "In fact, you can pick the show." Had his ears deceived him? Lincoln, stared at her, grabbing the remote to make sure that she wasn't just screwing with him. He then looked at the t.v., slowly flipping through the channels, looking back at her occasionally to really see if she was going to stop him. He settled on Arggh!, waiting for Lynn to just lose it and steal the remote back so that she could watch her game. Nothing. In fact, Lynn seemed to actually like watching what was on. Lincoln tried focusing on the program but before he knew it, the credits started to roll and he just couldn't handle the queer atmosphere that was being generated.
"Uh, thanks for letting me watch my show, Lynn," he said before getting off the couch. A chill went down his spine as he heard "Thanks for picking the show, Lincoln" emanate from her mouth. No, no, something wasn't right. His sister never let someone change it from a game she was in the middle of watching, not without a fight. He turned to see that a smile was on her face, making the feeling of fear start to resonate even more within his gut. He decided that the best course of action was to head back to his bedroom before she could hurt him, if that was her plan.
Lynn, on the other hand, was fighting a completely different set of emotions from those of her little brother. She had been trying to suppress some odd feelings that she had been having for him. She didn't know why, but for some reason weird feelings were emerging within her for her brother just a month or two prior to school letting out. She didn't know how to explain them, nor did she really know where to go to see who could explain them. Instead, she was focusing on the fact that her brother was leaving the couch, berating herself for scaring him. She tried to act as normal as possible but that was easier said than done. She sighed internally before grabbing the remote to see if the game was still on. It still was, her team just barely winning. At least there was something to give her comfort for what had happened.
Why do I feel this way for him? she thought over and over again, enough to keep her from enjoying the game. The buzzer rang and her team had won. She had a slight smile stretched onto her face, happy to see something good come from all of this. Her thoughts then returned to Lincoln, destroying the happiness she felt, remembering that she had scared him away with her attempts at being nicer to him. At least she could try to figure it all out a little later. Lincoln came down the stairs again, heading for the door.
"Where are you headed off to?" she called from the couch. He looked at her before replying.
"I'm off to the arcade," he responded, a form of cheer and happiness entering his voice.
"Mind if I come as well?" she inquired. Lincoln's heart stopped. He had shock coursing through his body, trying to make sense of what his sister had said before all the processes reached the same conclusion: that yes, she had indeed asked to come to the arcade with him.
"Um, sure," he told her, worried of her meeting Ronnie Anne. Hopefully she would keep herself occupied with some sport game while he enjoyed a little competition in a game with his girlfriend. They started walking together, making some small talk as they strolled. Lynn seemed a bit too invested in his interests, he noticed. He welcomed the thought that one of his sisters would take an interest in his hobbies, but this was the one who seemed to have a completely different set of interests from his. She was practically a mirror opposite to him. Still, something was gnawing at him, as though things weren't as they seemed. They arrived not too long after their trip.
"You know, I think they have some sort of hoop shot game in here," he told her in an attempt to get her to be distracted from him. He still didn't want his sisters to know of the relationship he had with Ronnie Anne, a feeling that was mutual with her. Lynn thanked her brother, looking around the arcade for something to catch her eye. The hoop shot game was in the back just like he said, but she passed on it, looking for something a little closer to Lincoln. He was still waiting just outside the entrance, looking like he was waiting for someone. She started to play a game that allowed her a good view of him. She paid some attention to the game, trying to get a feel for the rail shooter only to end up getting a "Game Over" screen after failing to truly grasp the idea of the mechanics. She looked back to Lincoln, seeing him lower his head and start walking away. She rushed to his side.
"What's wrong Link?" she asked, trying to find the source of his broken feelings.
"Oh, uh, nothing," he replied, still walking away after having barely turned toward her.
"We just barely got here," she lightly protested before an idea stuck itself into her head. "How about we enjoy a game or two before we leave." He picked his head up, surprise somewhat visible on his face, before he started contemplating the idea.
"I doubt you'll agree to anything I wish to play," he stated, nearly resuming his former posture.
"And what makes you say that?" she countered. Immediately they stopped. He gave a look of disbelief. If it wasn't apparent before, it sure was now.
"Well, I just figured you'd–"
"I'd what? Come on, there's a game I think you could help me with," she interrupted, hoping to get him to reconsider his decision.
"Alright, I guess," he replied, looking less gloomy as he went back, Lynn following him. They began getting into the rail shooter she had chosen, enjoying some time together. His mood seemed to be picking up as he blasted through some enemies, Lynn doing the same.
"So, who were you to meet today?" she struck up, trying to see who it was.
"Well... I can't," Lincoln said, with a slight blush coming to his face.
"And just why not?" she asked, a bit of wonder creeping into her voice.
"Because you'll tell the family," he stated truthfully, getting hit by one of the enemies.
"I am appalled by such an accusation against my dear name!" she exclaimed softly, playfulness coating the tone.
"Alright, alright, but only if you promise not to tell anyone else," he forced out, attempting to get some sort of assurance to keep it a secret.
"I promise on my name as a Loud," she said with fake seriousness. He chuckled a little before he resumed.
"I was supposed to meet Ronnie Anne today but she was unable to make it," he explained, taking another hit from a lucky enemy.
"What?" was all that Lynn could manage, allowing an enemy to relentlessly take her health. A countdown began.
"Yeah," he started before being rudely interrupted by another lucky attack from an enemy, leaving him at a countdown screen. "Want to keep going or call it quits?"
"I think you've spent enough on me," she replied, seeing the counter hit zero. "So what were you saying?"
"Oh, I was just saying that I was supposed to meet with Ronnie Anne today, but she had other obligations," he explained as they got to the score chart to enter a name. "What do you want to put?"
"How about 'LLL'?" she told him.
"Works for me," he said as he pointed at that letter. They had achieved the highest score on the leaderboard. "Must be a fresh game," he muttered to himself. "So, yeah, that's why I came here." Lynn looked at him, her heart seeming to sink when hearing him talk of another girl in his life. They began to make their way home, the sun a bit lower in the sky.
"So... why were you meeting her?" Lynn forced the question, knowing what the answer might be. Lincoln began to fidget a little.
"Well... because it was date," he said after struggling to find the right words. Lynn took the words as a nail being pounded into her heart.
"Oh," was all she managed, trying to keep the sadness out of her voice. The walk home seemed to consist of silence with bits of conversation moving between them. They entered the door, their hearing assaulted by the chaos of the home. Lincoln turned to Lynn.
"Thanks for coming to the arcade with me," he told her, an unaware grin appearing, not realizing that he was banging at the nail in her heart with a verbal hammer.
"Your welcome. Thanks for taking me," she replied, trying to put on a mask of happiness. He headed up the stairs, presumably to his room. She checked if anyone was watching t.v., spotting Lola and Lana enjoying some Blarney. Without any other option to keep her truly occupied, save for some sport activity, she went up to her shared room. She buried her head in a pillow, hoping to drown out her sorrows by being alone with her thoughts, praying they would reach something sporty and away from Lincoln.
"What's wrong?" a voice sprang from nowhere.
"I don't want to talk about it, Lucy," she replied, too busy wallowing in her depression and pillow to have been scared by her sister's sudden appearance.
"You know the problem won't go away if you don't talk about it," Lucy said, hoping to get an answer.
"It won't go away if I do talk about it," she retorted, her face no longer buried and staring at Lucy.
"Let me rephrase: I won't go away until you tell me," Lucy delivered. Lynn, with the ultimatum forced onto her, sighed before explaining, sitting up to face her sister.
"Alright, fine," she started, "I don't know why, but... I think I love our brother," she explained, trying to find the right words to accurately describe it without being blunt, meeting with bluntness instead. Lucy just stared silently, Lynn unable to see what was going on behind her eyes.
"You're messing with me, aren't you?" was Lucy's response.
"I'm not," Lynn reiterated, trying to get the seriousness drilled into her sister's head.
"You really are serious," Lucy gasped. Lynn had her face buried in her hands, a blush of embarrassment coming on, waiting for the insults to start coming her way. "You have to tell him." Lynn was surprised by this reaction, moving her hands so that she could look at her sister.
"I can't," she countered, knowing full well of the consequences that might ensue from her gesture. She couldn't stand the thought of never seeing her brother if he rejected her for pouring her heart out to him. Then would come the family, next society. No, this wasn't an option.
"You must. It'll only get worse if you don't do anything," Lucy opined, her voice changing slightly from deadpan. "This is just when Edwin... no, wait, that was a different series. Point is, you can't not tell him." Lynn thought this over before giving a reply.
"And what of the good book, huh? It says that this is wrong," she countered, remembering when they used to attend church before the family got too big to contain the rowdiness, instead being left to study the bible on Sundays in observance.
"Then do something, because you might end up doing something worse than this," Lucy responded, backing off on the subject. Lynn then noticed Lucy had disappeared again, leaving her alone with her thoughts. She laid back down onto her bed, covering her face with her hands once more. Which Hell is worse? Lynn wondered to herself.
Lincoln had resumed his attempt at finishing his comic, turning the last page. All he could think about was the way his sister had been acting. So much so, that he couldn't really recall the last few pages of the comic he just finished. He sighed, putting the item away, starting to really think about and recall the behavior she had been exhibiting prior to today. She seemed different though it had been so subtle, that today was the first time he really noticed the queer behavior. For the past two weeks, he hadn't been surprise-grappled by her. Then there was the lack of contact sports for a bit longer than that. Finally, he noticed the lack of involvement he had with sports in which he played against her for at least a month. Maybe he could talk to her about it after dinner.
A note slid under his door, removing him from his thoughts. He picked it up and unfolded it to see what the paper held in its clutches. It read: Someone close has feelings for you. He couldn't tell who wrote it, though he was able to recognize all his sisters styles of writing. This one seemed like it was purposely altered, trying to hide their identity. Maybe he could talk with Lisa or even Lynn to see who wrote it.
Lynn was poking her food with her fork, having only eaten half of it. Everyone around her had finished their plates. Her mother soon noticed and spoke up.
"What's wrong, honey?" she asked of her lovelorn daughter.
"What? Oh, it's just..." she led, trying to think of something decent. She didn't want to lie, especially to her mother, but telling your parents that you love a sibling as more than a sibling just isn't what you want to say if you wish to keep a strait jacket off of you, or worse yet, if you don't wish to drive them away with your life choices. Still, the decisions were there, weighing heavily on her mind. "My team lost their game today," she lied, hoping that her parents would buy it.
"Oh, well, sorry then," her mother responded, apparently buying it. She even assumed that it was a championship game from the way her daughter acted. Lincoln, on the other hand, was dealing with a separate problem. He was considering asking Lisa for help with the identity of the one who wrote the note he received, but chose against it. She seemed to be wrapped up in some sort of study involving Lily. Still, he barely finished his plate when a voice asked something of him.
"What?" he replied, unable to discern who it was that asked him or even what it was.
"I said, is everything alright?" Lana questioned. He wanted to say that something was bothering him, but the explanation of the item at the top of the list was something he didn't want to go through, so he went with item number two.
"Yeah, it's that Clyde is away for awhile, so I really have nothing to occupy myself with," he answered, hoping it would keep his younger sisters from prying too deep.
"Well, if you need to ever know how to win a beauty pageant, then I can help," Lola offered.
"Yeah, and I might need some help building the perfect mud-pie, if you're interested," Lana proffered, both trying to help their older brother through his rut. Lisa was too busy with her study to offer help, Lily too young to really give him anything to help soothe her older brother's woes. Lucy stayed silent, knowing what the problem was that sat at the top of her older brother's mind. Lynn walked into the kitchen to store her dinner in the fridge, passing by the kid table that was the eating place of her younger brother. She blushed lightly upon seeing him, though it helped her speed across the room so as to get out quickly. Lincoln saw that she had moved faster after seeing him, but not the blush that gave her the burst of speed. He moved to set his dishes at the sink, finding that Lynn moved even faster to leave the room.
"Curiouser and curiouser," he muttered to himself, vaguely remembering the famous line.
Lincoln headed straight into his room, trying to decipher the meaning of the message. Something wasn't right. No, this was trouble in paradise. He sat, playing the events of the day in his head, hoping to see what he was missing. A knock came at his door, removing him from his internal devices.
"Come in," he instructed, seeing that it was Lynn at his door as she entered the former linen closet. "Need something?" he asked, wondering what her visit was about.
"I need to tell you something," she replied. Lucy's words were stuck in her mind, constantly telling her to tell her brother of her feelings. She felt knots twisting and playing havoc in her stomach, nearly crippling her. She looked at him, seeing that he was all ears. The concern on his face was what was getting to her. She had double-checked to make sure the door was shut before entertaining the thought of continuing. "I... I... I can't do this!" she cried before leaving his room, tears begging at the doors that were her eyes. She bolted to her shared room, closing the door before leaning on it, only to slide to the floor, her back still pressed against it. Lucy would just have to enter through one of the vents, she thought in the deep recesses of her mind. Her face was buried in her knees as she began to cry, trying to keep it as soft as possible so as to lessen the involvement of her other siblings.
Lincoln sat there, speechless. He had never seen his older sister cry before. He really wondered what it was that she wanted to tell him, then he began to remember the note that was under his door, wondering if that was somehow a part of all of this. Still, he hated to see one of his siblings under such duress, always wanting to fix the problem so that they could return to their normal self. He got up, making his way to Lynn and Lucy's room, hoping to see what it was that was causing havoc with her emotions. He knocked. Nothing. He knocked once more.
"Go away," was all he got from Lynn.
"It's me, Lincoln," he informed her, hoping she would let him in. He heard someone getting off the floor and door before he was greeted by the sight of a crying Lynn. She ushered him in, closing the door.
"What do you need?" she asked, after turning back to him. Her eyes were all puffy and red from the crying she had done.
"I came in to see what the problem was," he said, stating the reason for his visit rather bluntly. She should have known that he would come in and try to console her, yet it slipped from her mind, forcing her to have to tell him what it was she meant to tell him in his room.
"You wouldn't understand if I told you," she said, trying to come off as cold, but failing spectacularly.
"Then I'll wait until I do understand," he told her calmly. Tears threatened to break across her eyes once more. She leaned against the door, going straight to the ground. She wanted to bury her face into her knees, but he came over to join her. After plopping down on her right side, he wrapped his left arm around her neck, trying to bring her into a hug of sorts. Instead, she kept fer face tucked away behind her hands, crying as she went into his chest. He waited until she stopped crying, so that he could see what the problem was, oblivious to the fact that he lay at the center of it all. Finally, the tears stopped flowing and she began to compose herself, moving from his chest though not throwing his arm from around her, bringing her knees to her own chest. "Are you ready to tell me what's bothering you?" he asked in concern. She merely nodded before responding.
"The problem is..." she struggled to say it, the words themselves refusing to leave of their own volition, "I... I think I love you."
"Well, I love you too, Lynn," Lincoln said, missing what she meant.
"No, not like that at all. I mean, I love you more than as a brother to me," she said, hoping that he understood what she was saying.
"Like, as in you love me like a friend," Lincoln said, the shock in his voice growing as he hoped that was what she meant, though he was beginning to reach a conclusion that seemed to match Lynn's very meaning.
"No. I mean, I love you more than a sister should," she said, turning toward him, the next series of words hitting Lincoln slowly, "I love you as someone would for someone that isn't related to them." Lincoln went white from hearing this. He wanted to faint, wanted to be sure this was all some sort of strange dream he could wake from. Lynn saw this and looked ready to cry again. "Please, say something," she choked, trying to keep from having her tears fall once more.
"I don't know how to respond," he managed, stunned at the revelation.
"I knew it! I just knew you would think less of me!" Lynn accused, tears beginning to flow. He simply pulled her back to him.
"I don't think any less of you," he said calmly, having regained some of his senses. She stopped crying, shocked at what he had said. He continued with his line of thought. "I really don't know what to think, but I don't think any less of you." His words held comfort to them, even if it was a little. He rubbed his forehead and eyes with his free hand. "I really don't know what to think or say, but I don't think any less of you. That much is true." She hugged him, glad to know that he still loved her, even if it was just as a sister, though a thought raced through her mind, causing her to panic.
"Please don't tell mom and dad or anyone of our sisters, please," she begged, the very idea causing her to panic so.
"Don't worry, I won't say a thing to them," he reassured, trying to make sure she was going to calm down. He wasn't even sure if he should tell them or not. He then figured that he might have to think on the revelation. Still, nothing was normal about this. He started thinking back to the good book and what it said about this very thing, but even so, he still didn't know what to do with the items presented before him tonight.
Authors note: I do realize that incest is wrong. However, that said, this is a story that I've had rattling around in my head or a while and so I decided to write what is more or the less the story I wished to tell. Now if you don't like it simply because of incest, then I politely ask you to keep it to yourself. If there is something else that is bothering you, then let us please be adults about it. That said, I am going to inform you that I'm shooting for an upload once a week. I hope you understand this, as I am trying to write other pieces of fiction that aren't nigh impossible to publish like the one you just read/will read. Now, I am open to taking suggestions, though I may not use them. That said, enjoy the next chapter soon. P.S.: I might be uploading somewhere between Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. I don't know which will be the upload day.
Edit: Alright. So, I managed to edit this chapter and others will be on the way, all of which is leading up to the grand finale. I hope you enjoyed and will look out for the other edited chapters soon.
