You And Me - A Collection of Les Twins One Shots

Abyss

Author's note: I want to say a few words. Laurent never knows when to quit but thankfully this has NOT happened in real life and I don't think it will. They are both very fit and I think their threshold is unnaturally high. Injuries and exhaustion - to a certain degree - are par for the course in their line of work. So this is just my mind running with another chance of hurt/comfort. I hope you enjoy!

****

Laurent wasn't exactly the self-preservative type.

In fact he was such an expert at pretending he was fine when he actually wasn't, that the entire crew had started to believe he was superhuman.

In hindsight, it was a miracle it hadn't happened sooner. There were only so many sleepless nights and only so many skipped meals one could take before the fuel tank was empty.

But stubborn as he was, Laurent had ignored the way every single joint in his body throbbed with pain. He had ignored Larry too, on the rare occasions where his twin brother was stupid enough to voice his concern.

So when Laurent collapsed in front of eighty thousand people, it really shouldn't have come to anyone's surprise. Least of all, to his own.

****

Laurent couldn't remember the last time he had an actual night of full sleep.

He usually averaged a solid three to four hours and that was on a good day when they weren't traveling and when they didn't have a performance. He usually also slept best when they were at their mom's place, in the familiar surroundings of their childhood home.

If it wasn't always nightmares keeping him up, it was memories. Of their dad's fury-torn face, of the sound of furniture breaking in the room next door and the helplessness that came with it, of getting cornered in an alleyway and beaten within an inch of his life, of Larry's unmoving body and scraped face in a halo of his own blood.

Those were the nights when Laurent dragged himself out of bed and trudged down the creaky stairs to play FIFA or watch Netflix. But even then, his mind couldn't shut down. Even then, his brain liked to torture hi, replaying all the scenes over and over again, like a broken TV screen and Laurent didn't know where the power button was, he didn't have a cord to unplug. He was just stuck in that nightmarish reality of what they had lived through and what was yet to come.

He could never tell anyone, of course. Although their mother's concerned gazes never eluded him when she took stock of the dark circles under his eyes. She had her own demons, and yet in the dead quiet of dawn, when it was just the two of them sitting at the table, she looked at him like she was the only person who truly understood him, who got him completely, sometimes even more so than Larry did.

"Did you sleep well?" she would ask him, on very rare occasions when it was particularly apparent that he wasn't okay, that he was getting crushed by all the things left unspoken, all the wounds that had never healed right.

And Laurent hated her in those moments, because she knew. She knew he was so desperate for something only she knew to give.
And yet here they were, both quiet, both suffering in their own ways. And he would get up from his chair, the legs of the wooden chair scraping loudly against the floor before leaning down to kiss the crown of their mother's head, one arm circling around her in a loose hug.

And he would just hold her like that with tears prickling in his eyes, trying not to think of a time when she wouldn't be there anymore. Trying not to think about how quickly that time was approaching or about how they would never use the precious time left to say the things that truly mattered.

"Don't you worry about me, okay?" he said, still holding on to her. Still clinging to her even when she had yet to move one muscle to return the embrace. "I don't want you to worry about me."