You And Me - A Collection of Les Twins One Shots

Guardian

When Larry was born, he came out with the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. 

For a full minute, the doctors were yelling stats over her head and trying to get him to breathe while a cold panic spread in her chest. 

"He's not crying," she gasped, grabbing a fistful of the nurse's coat. "W-why isn't he crying?"

Barely a minute old, Larry steered head-first into critical condition. He hadn't gotten any oxygen in the birth channel, and now he wasn't moving, his skin taking on a sickeningly blueish hue as his organs slowly failed. She watched through a vision of tears as Larry's vitals plummeted further, and the doctors hooked an array of nodes and machines to his body in a frantic effort to get his oxygen levels up. Laurent was shrieking and hiccuping from across the room, squirming and kicking in the nurse's hold like he was trying to come to his twin's aid.

"Please- What's wrong with him?" she demanded, her voice wavering.

Laurent's wails turned louder and more desperate by the second, raising the tiny hair on the back of her neck. She tried to lift herself off the cot, which was a ridiculous endeavor after having just given birth twice, but even in her weakened state, it took two nurses and a midwife to coax her back down. The thought of Larry leaving this world before he'd even fully entered it was more painful than anything else she'd ever gone through. The machines started beeping as Larry's heart grew weaker in front of everyone's eyes. The doctor yelled orders over her head and everyone was frantic to save the newborn's life but nothing seemed to work. Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity, the doctor turned toward her with sad resignation in his eyes.

Laurent's cries were earsplitting, his little body was hiccuping around choppy breaths to a point where one of the nurses moved toward the incubator to remove the squirming bundle from the tragedy of the scene.

"Don't!" she cried, her vision swimming as her gaze lingered on her youngest. "L-let him say goodbye to his brother," she whispered and the nurse's lips twisted in empathy. She hesitated for only a second before she carried the wailing baby back to the incubator and gently placed him down next to his twin.

Laurent's chortled cries quieted the second he was placed next to Larry on the soft blanket inside the cubicle. He snuggled close to his twin on mere instinct, seeking out a warmth that was no longer there. His pudgy little arm flung out to the side, coming around Larry's back in a clumsy caress and he still moved closer until his face was squished against the spot between Larry's shoulder and neck. 

It was in that precise moment, with the heads of her two angels stuck together close enough for their dark hair to blur into one dark patch. With Laurent's fragile arm curled around Larry's back, the nodes attached to Laurent's chest picked up a flutter of a beat out of nowhere. 

For a full second, they all watched in awe as Larry's tiny chest started up the smallest of movements. Slowly, as if by a miracle, his skin returned to a healthy shade under the careful eye of a room filled with witnesses as his vitals picked up again.

She let out a choked-off little laugh amid the tears as the room broke out into a flurry of movement around her, her heart swelling with pride and love for her boys.

There was no doubt in her mind that Laurent had just saved Larry's life.

Xxx

Larry got diagnosed with Central Sleep Apnea at age four.

It started small at first, but as the years passed the issue got gradually worse.

Around the time he was six, Larry started getting nightmares. He dreamed of dark smoke clogging his throat and hooded figures trying to throttle him and it never failed to render her utterly terrified when they forced him awake screaming and thrashing in the middle of the night. It got to a point where Laurent was so afraid for his brother that she decided it was probably best if they slept in separate bedrooms. This solution only worked for one week before Larry's nightmares morphed into something that terrified him even more than dying. Because now the shrouded figures in his dreams no longer tried to kill him, but they came after Laurent, instead. On those nights, Larry didn't calm down unless she allowed him to climb back into Laurent's bed and hold onto him for dear life. She decided that it was cruel of her to leave Larry to face his darkest fears alone, seeing as how Laurent's presence was a comfort to him. So they slept wound up tightly together in a tangle of limbs and blankets beneath the thick duvet.