Hello my dear readers! I apologise for my inactivity the past few months and the big pile of wank I am ashamed to call this chapter. Please don't have any high expectations for this one. I am not happy with how this turned out, but I need something of a filler or this fic would have had a very abrupt end.

~o~o~

The end of May was nearing, and so the time to move away was creeping closer and closer. Even though he hated to admit it, Matthew was basically living towards that dreaded moment, and tried to do as much as he could to fill up the little time in Belgium he had left. Ninety percent of the time, that meant hanging out with Abel. Now was one of those ninety percent.

They'd met up in the city, but it was only a matter of time before the weather decided to hate them, and resorted to drizzling rain. Since Abel's house was the closest by, that was where they went to wait for the rain to be over, but all they got with time was only bigger amounts of water falling from the sky with thunder and lightning to boot. Apparently the very idea of Matthew going outside alone in a thunderstom brought out a rather creepy mother-y side in Abel that made him refuse letting him do anything of the sort. This basically meant that Matthew was stuck where he was.

And that only happened to make it more convenient for him to stay for dinner. Actually, it was Abel who had insisted on him staying over for dinner, and Willem who invited him to sleep over 'since he was there anyway' and 'it'd take an hour or five for the worst to be over'.

The biggest challenge had been convincing their mothers to allow their sleeping over-plans. Chloé only needed a nudge into the right direction from her husband, some emotional blackmail and a pair of tear-filled green puppy-eyes, but Ellen was a tougher nut to crack. Especially since she couldn't see Matthew's puppy-eyes through the phone. It was Jonathan whose puppy-eyes she couldn't resist that got her to join the good side. So Ellen drove over to the other side of the city to drop off Matthew's things instead of picking him up. Along with his bag, Matthew got a bunch of warnings, such as that he was to behave himself, he wouldn't stay up late, and that he and Abel would do 'he-knew-what'. Yeah, sure. She was really underestimating his innocence here. His and his mother's definition of 'plans' were miles and miles apart. Whereas her mind drifted to thoughts that were definitely not safe for work, his 'plans' had more to do with payback. After dinner, in an unguarded moment, Matthew saw and took the one chance for it.

"Chloé?"

"Yes?"

"Do you, by any chance have any humiliating baby-pictures of Abel?"

The moment he spoke the words 'humiliating baby-pictures', Chloé got a grin on her face, and suddenly Matthew knew where Abel had gotten that expression.

"Revenge time, is it? I'll be right back." She darted out of the room, came back seconds later holding a big fat photo album and sat down right next to Matthew. Just when she opened the album to show a page-filling wedding picture, Abel jumped over the back of the couch and plopped down next to his mother. "Hey, what are you-Oh, no. Mum, put that away."

Chloé didn't have the slightest intention to listen. Her constant smile betrayed that she'd enjoy this time of mental torture as much as Matthew. "Please don't mind my poofy 80's wedding dress, or my poofy 80's perm. Those were the 80's." She started.

"Or dad with huge-ass sideburns." Abel added.

"It was '88, and you've got no room to talk, you know that?" Chloé said.

"Hey, I trim them. Dad had two entire forests growing on his face. How did you ever fall for him?"

Chloé turned to Matthew. "How did you ever fall for this oddball?"

"No idea." He shrugged.

Chloé skipped a few pages. "And this is my very wrong, not as bad as my 80's perm, but still quite bad 90's haircut. And this is me-"

"Looking like shit." Abel butted in.

"Thank you for clearing that up. That's me seconds after giving birth, and you were the slowest little sloth in the history of babies, so no whining about my red face or messed-up ponytail hair."
That was an accurate description of the picture. It was Chloé, at home, looking tired and sweaty and holding her two just minutes-old babies in her arms without a care in the world she looked like a mess.

"You can't really see them very well here, but this..." Chloé went to the next page. "Is little baby Abel." She pointed to the baby right on the picture, wrapped warmly in a blue blanket. He used to be a tiny little baby, that was for sure, being significantly lighter and smaller than Judithe. But there was one even bigger difference between the two: He looked surprisingly cranky for a baby. And he was giving whoever was behind the camera the finger. Lovely.

Matthew was in the middle between laughing out loud and melting of cuteness. "Aww, so he's always looked like that." He sniggered. Abel tried to smack him behind his mother's back, but Matthew ducked away. "Look at those big green eyes. You were so cute."

"Aren't I still?"

"Oh, yes. Very." Matthew answered sarcastically.

On the next page were two pictures of the twins separately, a few weeks later. "Judithe Sophie Manon Diepeveen" was written underneath the left one, "Abel Diederik Jan Diepeveen" underneath the other.

Matthew snorted. "That's your full name?"

"It's not like yours is any better, Timothy."

"Could have been worse. Al has Franklin."

"You called him 'Alfred Fuck Jones' yesterday."

"So much for awkward middle names, because the name Diederik often gets shortened to 'Dick'." Chloé said in a very flat tone, and Matthew snorted and laughed out loud. Especially when he looked straight at Abel's very un-amused deadpan, he nearly fell off the sofa laughing.

"You really didn't put much thought into naming me, did you?" He put every ounce of bitterness he had into that statement at his mother, but she didn't seem to take that as an insult.

"We did. We've predicted the future quite well, I'd say."

Silence.

"Oh, just kidding." Chloé said in an airy tone and hugged her scowling son. "I love you." To back this statement up, she gave him a big fat kiss on the cheek as well. This was not appreciated by the recipient as evident by crinkling of his nose and the fact he wiped off his cheek with his hand.

"Hope he doesn't do that with you." Chloé said to Matthew.

"You don't want to be around when he does."

"I'm crazy, not stupid." Abel immediately responded.

A lot of pictures of the twins with old people later, they had skipped ahead into time to the first pictures of León Henri Rémi Diepeveen. And if those didn't cause instant cavities, nothing would. There was one particularly sweet one of toddler Judithe and Abel standing at their days-old brother's crib and both kissing his chubby pink cheeks. Not much later, there was the twin's birthday, and they were feeding each other brightly coloured cake.

"What did you have on your head?" Matthew chuckled at the pointy hats the two wore in the pictures.

"At least it wasn't cake."

"At least I didn't look like a shiny pin."

"You looked like you head-butted a cake. Which you had at some point."

This time, Matthew tried to deal Abel a smack to the back of the head behind Chloé's back, but he missed. What followed was nothing short of a childish cat-fight, before mum Diepeveen pushed them apart. "Leave me out of your little domestic, you two."

"Sorry." Matthew quickly apologised.

They went on to some more cute, funny and downright adorable moments of Abel and his siblings' early years. Swimming lessons when they were five, first missing teeth for the twins, them sleeping against each other in the car after a day in an amusement park and the three siblings in the garden with all their grandparents and the great-grandparents who were still alive at that time. Six of them, to be exact. All quite the old doves with white hair and wrinkles as appropriate for people in their 90's, one of them with a walking cane.

"So who were they?" Matthew asked.

"These two are my father's parents." Chloé said, pointing at the appropriate pair. "So my grandpa and grandma Vandemaele."

"Wow." Matthew's mouth nearly fell open. He had hardly even known his grandpa Jones, let alone the generation before that.

"And these two here, a little older, are Willem's grandpa and grandma Krier, and his grandmother Diepeveen. And this man is my grandfather Schiltz. This picture was taken in his garden in Luxembourg. "

"How old was he here?"

"103." Abel answered, grinning as he enjoyed the gasp that drew from Matthew.

"That is proper old." He stammered. "That's not even long ago. Only about ten years?"

"Eleven." Chloé said. "But yes, he was really old."

There was much more Matthew wanted to ask, but his mind was a little too blown to comprehend it all. One thing he did notice was that seven-year-old Abel had three butterfly stitches on his forehead, right where his scar was now. That got him a little curious as to how he got it in the first place, but he let it slide. That was for some other time.

They skipped through more photos and Matthew nearly got diabetes from the sweetness of it all. "You were so cute." Matthew squeaked out at a certain point after seeing a picture of approximately nine-year-old him jumping off a huge fishing ship into the water.

Abel frowned. "No, I wasn't."

"Yes, you were." Chloé said. "Especially if we let you near water."

She went back to the first quarter of the book and pointed at a beach-picture. Little kiddy Abel sitting on the beach, building dams, dikes and digging canals to protect his sand castle from the upcoming tide. He was concentrating really hard, it seemed, with his eyes looking determined, and his tongue poking out.

"Civil engineering, here is your youngest student." Matthew sniggered.

"Stop it." He grumbled.

"And look how he's concentrating." Chloé added up to it.

"Mum."

"With your Little Mermaid-bucket."

"Stop it."

"And that little quiffy."

"And your huge, jiggly gut in the background." He pointed at his mother being very pregnant of León in the background.

"I was more than six months pregnant! You can't blame me for having a huge gut, you little clown." Chloé accompanied her scolding with a smack to the back of the head with a pillow.

"No, I blame dad for that." Which earned him another smack to the head. Somehow, they ended up commenting on the pictures and smacking each other with pillows for it, making up for a very hilariously awkward scene that didn't end until they'd seen the last picture of the album. Most of Matthew's efforts to not snort, at least were in vain. It was alomost like he was watching a Monty Python sketch at some point in Abel and his mum's sarcastic fun-poking at each other.

Even when he was cleaning his teeth later on in the evening, Matthew gave an occasional snort at the sheer memory of it. He needed some distraction, or he'd end up sniggering all night.

Only a second later, he regretted that thought when Abel walked into the bathroom shirtless. Gosh, he should be used to seeing him like that by now, but no. When unprepared, Matthew had to bite down on his teeth to not show any of his obvious awkwardness. He just stared straight at his own reflection on the mirror. Or at least, he tried to. Somehow, his eyes drew themselves to the shirtless guy next to him. Curse his eyes.

"What's there to stare at, Matty?" Abel asked after he spat out the last bits of toothpaste.

"How much do you weigh actually?" Matthew asked, trying to hide how awkward he felt staring at the protruding bones here and there.

"Erm, around 75 or something."

"What?" Matthew deadpanned. "Step on the scale. I wanna see that."

Abel shrugged and did as he was told. 75,3 kg, it said. "Your turn, Matty."

"No."

"Yes."

"No-Put me down!" Abel had just picked him up by his arms like a doll, turned around and planted him onto the scale. According to the device, there was 75,3 kg of Matthew.

"That's pretty cool. I've got my own body weight in Matty." Abel sniggered.

"It's not cool!" Matthew stepped off the scale. "How can we weigh exactly the same when I'm 1,77 and you're what, 1,95 tall?"

"1,98, last time I checked."

"Good grief. You're a walking X-ray picture."

"You're a sausage."

"Sausage?"

"Yup, a little sausage who never lost his baby-fat." Abel grinned and started poking Matthew's waist. "You're so soft." He said so dreamily he could have been high.

"Stop that, Toothpick." Matthew deadpanned. He should have known better than that, he realised, when he was picked up and carelessly hung over Abel's shoulder. Great. Just great. Abel was carrying him like a caveman. He just hoped for dear life that no one would come upstairs to see that. For a moment, he considered slapping his ass, but that was probably the worst thing he could do from that position.

He was put back on his feet when they were in Abel's bedroom. The room seemed significantly smaller than usual.
"What a shame of the effort your mother did to put an extra bed in here." Matthew said.

Abel shrugged. "It's not like she has to know, or anything. If she'd listened to my dad, it wouldn't have been here in the first place."

Matthew got changing into his pyjamas. Or rather: Pyjama trousers. It was far too warm around that time of year to actually wear the shirt. It would have been bearable if they were to sleep separately, but he wasn't joking anyone there: There was no way he'd miss a chance to cuddle up against his boyfriend. No way.

There was no way Abel would let a chance like that slide either, Matthew knew. But just to be sure and to tease him just a little more, he let his trousers hang low on his hips. Matthew himself didn't think it was remotely flattering with the waistband slightly digging into his back and hips, and his belly poking over just a little bit, but it had already proven that just doing that was enough to turn himself into an Abel's-hands-magnet.

"So how did you like mini-me?" Abel asked before getting a new pair of pyjama trousers from his wardrobe.

"Adorable, and a bit weird. But your mom is more of a joker than I thought she would be."

"You didn't think I got it all from my dad, did you?" Abel chuckled.

"Sorry, I did. Good thing she can take a joke. You looking through pictures with my mother didn't go so well." Matthew shook his head.

"Really? What would make your say that?"

"You indirectly called her fat. Twice."

"So? She is, by the way."

"Way to make friends with your future mother in law."

"Is that a promise, Matty?" Abel asked, looking at him from the corners of his eyes and with a near-invisible grin playing on his lips.

"Wha-tha- I didn't say anything like that."

"But you also promised never to break up with me again." Abel's grin got wider and wider every second.

"Wha-bu-and-"

"You pinkie promised." There was quite an evil undertone in that comment, as he teasingly wagged his little finger.

Matthew dropped himself in the chair at Abel's desk and let his head hang in defeat. Pinkie promise. That was going to haunt him for the rest of his life for sure. He'd known it back then, and it was now proven: he'd never hear the end of it.
When he came to think of it, theoretically speaking, given that Abel would never break up with him either, that somewhat meant they were, a bit, in a way, sort of...engaged.

…

The images of the future already flashed over Matthew's mental eye. Wedding, suits, rings, crying mother, reception, first dance, wedding night, aaargh!

No.

No!

Nope, nope, nope-di-nope nooo!

In complete misery and with cheeks glowing in the colour of his favourite hoody, Matthew slammed his forehead onto the desk. He moaned in deep, deep misery.

"What's wrong with you all of a sudden?" Abel asked.

The answer was another defeated-sounding moan. Instead of laughing his arse off like he usually would, Abel gathered the pile of misery that was his boyfriend into his arms.

"You wouldn't dare!" Matthew shrieked.

"Just you watch." Abel responded and tossed him onto his bed. Matthew yelped loudly, and it was only a second before he was yanked into the tightest, most possessive bear-hug to date.

"Face it, Matty. You'll be stuck with me forever." Abel shamelessly had his hands all over him, stroking adoringly, and planted kisses wherever he could reach.

"Nooo!" Matthew whined, face in his hands and shaking his head while still laughing. Because how bad would that be? Them together forever? That would be amazing.

Easier said then done, because no matter how much they wanted to stay together, there was no telling how long their relationship would survive when there was an entire ocean and eight time zones keeping them apart. Throughout the day, they'd both forgotten about it, but now the thought was painfully present again. People had broken up over less than that. Heck, they had broken up over less than that, so there was a dang good reason to be concerned.

And that concern was exactly why Matthew shifted just a little closer and Abel held on a little more tightly as they both fell asleep.

~o~o~o~

Vandemaele is the surname I had in mind for Belgium, and Krier or Schiltz for Luxembourg. I'm not sure about that one yet.

The time for your favourite twins to move away is coming closer, and so is the end of this fanfic. There will be a few more chapters and maybe, just maybe an epilogue or two.

And yes, I'm procrastinating.

Please review?