You And Me - A Collection of Les Twins One Shots

Fade to Black

"Larry, grab that beam for me?" Lincoln, one of the stage mechanics asked and Larry held onto one of the supporting arches the stage floor was attached to. Lincoln grunted out a distracted 'thanks', and together with another mechanic the three of them worked, attaching steps on the sides and front of the stage.

Larry bounced a little on his heels, checking if the floorboards were secure enough to hold his weight. Satisfied with the construction, he beamed at the bald mechanic with the heavily tatted arms. "Lookin' good, Link," Larry praised the worker, clapping the hulk of a man on the shoulder and regretting it a little when his fingers slid off on sweaty skin.

The older man glared at him. "How often do I have to tell you to stop it with the Link bullshit?"

"It's an honor. Just take it." Larry rolled his eyes, unable to believe that someone named Lincoln wouldn't want to connect it to the legend of the computer game that was Zelda. Unbeknownst to Lincoln, the name also held a special place in Larry's heart for an entirely different reason. But that reason was currently 10.000 meters above the ground in a commercial airplane, hopefully landing soon.

Speaking of which.

Larry glanced down at his phone for what seemed like the millionth time that day and sighed when he saw the landing times. Laurent's flight from Paris had been delayed twice already. He told himself that the anxiety he felt was due to that and not because his brother had been gone for a week. Yes, that was it. He was only feeling tense because Laurent was going to be late for their show tonight. Definitely not because they hadn't seen each other in close to a week and now the plane was delayed, and what if something was wrong and there were technical issues and— 'Fuck.' Larry's mind started spiraling with worst-case scenarios.

"Anything else you need my help with?" he asked hopefully, trying to escape the feeling of discomfort that had lodged somewhere in his chest. "Back drop, spot lights?"

It was hard to explain what being separated from Laurent felt like. The closest he could get to describing it was to say that he felt incomplete. Whenever Laurent left, he took a part of Larry's soul with him. He actually left a hole in Larry's chest. A growing darkness, that quietly expanded with every day they were apart. It started out small at first, feeling a little more self-conscious in crowds, a bit less enthusiastic about going out in general. But then it turned into a deep-rooted restlessness that settled under his skin like an itch that couldn't be scratched. It affected his sleep too, giving him really bad episodes that he startled him awake at the dead of night, wheezing. And everything became less enjoyable, like his senses were muted; colors had less of a shine to them, music didn't sound quite as rhythmical, food lost its flavor. That was what his world looked like without Laurent. Dull. Boring. Reduced.

Phonecalls and Facetiming helped, but it never made up for the real deal, for having Laurent around, for being able to physically connect with him, to make eye contact, to share a silent look or a brief touch in conversation. So yes, Larry had been on edge. Last night he'd barely slept, tossing and turning and glancing at his phone every couple of minutes, texting his twin to see how he was doing, if he was already at the airport. And when the plane had taken off, cutting their means of communication entirely, Larry had decided to distract himself by helping the tech team with the stage set-up. They had looked at him weirdly, measuring him up as if to see if the skinny dancer boy could be of any use to them. But it didn't take long for them to see that Larry was made of nothing but lean muscle and that he wasn't 'too good' to get his hands dirty.

"What about the lighting, need me to help with that?"

"Nah, man. Shouldn't you be practicing your dance moves or something?"

"I would if you guys wouldn't take your sweet time out here," Larry teased, having learned a long time ago, not to take the snark of the stage technicians too seriously. They were a different breed of people altogether; a rogue bunch of hard-working guys who liked to joke around and get drunk after the shows. Hard exterior, soft on the inside. Something that Larry identified with.