You And Me - A Collection of Les Twins One Shots

J'arrive pas

Playmo had known their true potential ever since he'd first laid eyes on them. 

They were driven and talented, they had a lot of confidence. They were well-mannered and wise enough not to meddle with drugs or to hang with the wrong crowds. Before anything else, though, they were one support system split into two bodies. Two halves of a whole, in every possible sense of the word. That was their biggest asset. It would become the thing to define them, to distinguish them from others, to make them rise above everyone else.

It occurred to him that in order for them to go even beyond where they were now, they'd have to go somewhere painful. Somewhere they'd never gone before, not in their minds or in the real world. He'd rolled the thought around in his mind for a long time, wondered about whether they were ready for that or not and then decided to breach the topic over dinner one day, making use of the lockdown in Paris to finally sit them both down and bring it up.

Larry didn't take it well, as was to be expected.

"No," Larry said, his eyes flying around the room like a cornered animal. "Hell, no."

They were sitting in Playmo's living room, the kids having already gone to sleep and it was just  the three of them, no other crew members, not even his wife. Just them. He had known that Larry would be having a harder time with the concept than Laurent, but he hadn't expected for the backlash to be so strong.

"Why the drama?" Larry asked. "We'll just make it a happy end."

"Because it's not about a happy end, Larry," Playmo said. "It's about life."

Larry shook his head again, more forcefully this time. "No. I'm sorry, but no."  

He shoved his chair back from the table, quickly getting up and grabbing his jacket. 

Laurent looked at his brother with wide eyes, torn between following him and not behaving like an ungrateful dick in the house of their coach and father figure. 

Playmo could see the brief exchange between them, the split-second conversation of 'Larry?' and 'We're leaving'  that flashed between their eyes. He could tell from the way Laurent hesitated that this had the potential to blow up in his face, for example if Larry - who was already visibly agitated - mistook Laurent's hesitation for some kind of disloyalty. 

"It's okay," Playmo said, not wanting for the situation to escalate. "You can come back to me when you're ready."

Playmo could see the muscles tick in Larry's tightened expression, he could see the subtle change of emotion on the younger twin's face, the way Larry's grip tightened on the back of that chair as though he was about to smash it. He turned back to bestow Playmo with a deathly glare, one that would have caused him chills if he hadn't known Larry for so long. If he didn't know how much the man hurt inside, how much of that bottled-up anger was just the aching soul of a broken child. 

"Look, we won't be 'ready' for this. There's nothing to think about. It's a stupid idea. Nobody wants that kind of Romeo and Juliet bullshit. We have enough real-life drama to tell to the audience without making shit up." 

"Death is a part of life, Larry." This was a lesson for them both, but Larry was probably the one who needed it more than his brother. "You'll die as surely as you've been born and there's nothing bad about it. Nothing bad at all." 

"Don't talk to me like I'm a child," Larry growled. "I don't need you explaining life to me."

"Apparently you do." 

Larry's eyes blitzed dangerously across the table. "We won't do it and that's final."

"So don't," Playmo calmly responded, leaning back in his chair with his hands raised in a non-threatening gesture. He wasn't about to force them to go somewhere they weren't ready to go to. "But you should think about it. Because when the time comes, one of you will go first and there's nothing you can do against it."