Little Women Fic: A Night to Remember, Chapter 2 (Jo/Laurie)
I'm back again, with part 2 of what may be the strangest-- but most wickedly gratifying-- fanfic I've ever written! A hearty thank you to everyone who wrote, commented and encouraged me when I put up part 1. I was afraid I'd be writing directly into the wilderness but I was really surprised and pleased to know that there are actually some damn kind people-- and damn fine writers-- out there who actually are enjoying this as I stumble along with it.
Furthermore, a great deal of thanks goes to everyone who offered to help me with conceptualizing this story and who gave me so much wonderful, constructive criticism. You have all really helped me realize how important building on the characterization is when penning an AU and I hope chapter 2 really reflects my building on top of that. ♥
So, without rambling on still more, we may as well go on to...
Title: A Night To Remember, Chapter 2
Fandom: Little Women
Series: A Night to Remember
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Amy, Fred, Cast
Rating: R, Later NC-17
Summary: She had told him: "I can't betray my sister like this." And he had looked at her with those dark, frantic eyes and whispered: "You are going to be the death of me." Jo, Laurie, and what could have been and might still be.
Note: If you can't handle fairly explicit future descriptions of beloved children's book characters having sex, this may not be the fic for you. Not that I blame you for misgivings, naturally!
***
4.
Ever the gentleman, Laurie proposed to her sister soon afterward, after three terrible days of allowing Jo to look and look and look at him, and wonder why it had all gone so wrong, slipping through her fingers so soon. And on the day when he finally went up to Amy's room with a ring box in his hand and a glaze to his eyes, Jo had exiled herself out of the doors, braving the wind and wet rocks in search of shelter from her feelings. Leaving behind even her new companion, she had rambled through the woods in a listless daze, feeling vaguely as though the sickness that Amy had suffered had settled on her by some strange transitive act, wondering if it was only fair to feel as though her heart had been smashed open by someone who she had hurt previously.
He loved her. She couldn't deny it to herself anymore. He said he loved her completely.
She loved him. She knew that now. She knew that she loved him thoroughly.
And he was going to marry her sister, even though what they knew now made the act seem like blasphemy.
But it was still the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do. If they had any honor left to them, they would let the marriage Laurie had sought after so proceed quickly.
They couldn't smash Amy's heart, after all. Not after an illness that had nearly carried her away from them. Not after these months of his courtship. Not after the long years of the two of them being estranged, he hating and she repressing, moving from each other hastily.
In light of that, a few moments of stolen tenderness shouldn't mean anything.
He loved her and she loved him and it didn't matter, it couldn't matter, they would have to forget it completely. And with her face buried in her hands and her ears filled with the sound of her muffled sobs, she only realized that he had caught up to her last when his gentle hand had touched her back, eased to her shoulder, cupped the nape of her neck as though in search of new discovery.
She had known the heat of his hand just as well as she knew she could not enjoy it any longer. And she had not even been able to look at him when she had asked, in a muffled voice she could barely recognize as her own, "Have you two decided when you will be married?"
"Jo," he simply said in reply, and his voice had a strange sort of breathlessness to it, as though he himself were still in a dream. "Jo, Jo-- my love, my dearest! Jo, please look at me!"
Caught by her own morbid curiosity, she had, even as her eyes had blurred with further, treacherous tears. She could still remember being struck by the wild rapture in eyes she had thought would hold only sorrow, that were instead filled by both hope and fear.
His voice had been startlingly soft when he had next spoken, the pads of damp fingers already wiping away the sullen trails of her tears. She could still keenly remember the confusion she had felt, wondering why he hadn't been as broken as she was, wondering if she'd misread their second kiss in the first place, if there was something she was still missing.
But then he had spoken and she had understood why his voice had been so warm, why his eyes had been so tender, and why even the fingers framing her face had seemed so at ease.
"Jo, she refused me," Laurie began, and her grave gray eyes widened abruptly. "Your sister-- our Amy-- absolutely refused me! She told me that marrying me would be folly for both she and I, and that I should direct my question somewhere else entirely. And all I want to know now is if you..." He lost his voice for a moment, his eyes snaring within them hers, his tongue running against his full bottom lip nervously. "If you will give me a similar answer, if I-- if I repeat my question here."
For a moment, she couldn't quite understand what he was saying, her mind still filled thoughts of her sister's refusal, of everything she had expected and feared suddenly, abruptly changing. She couldn't even shake the shudder from her voice when she found it. "I... Teddy... Teddy, please don't toy with me now! Are you... did Amy truly...?"
Any misgivings she might have still had were easily washed away by the look on his face now, as he moved his handsome face closer to hers, his color high and his lips curving into that blush-worthy smile, his voice was sweet and throaty. "She was meant to be an painter after all, my dear girl. Like any good artist, she knew what was in our hearts earlier than we did. She told me she didn't quite have the energy to fend off the ridiculous charade of a courting I was heaping on her for the longest time but... she does now. She said that she knew I wanted something else, and truthfully, that made her want something else as well. I'm a free man, dearest. I can do anything! I mean... I mean, as long as..."
She could read the sudden hitch in his voice as though she were a fortune-teller. All of a sudden, it was so clear and easy.
"As long as we love each other?" she whispered, her unsteady hands coming to rest against the ones that were now caressing her swollen cheeks, in a clasp both tender and sincere. "Teddy... Teddy, I..." Another ridiculous welling of tears came to her eyes, though she hastily wiped them away before they could impede her again. "I... I know what I feel for you. But how do you really feel about me?"
At first, he seemed almost awestruck that she would have to ask such a question... though this clearly gave way to a laughing incredulity which led him to bend his curly head down to her lower one so he could kiss her wrinkled brow gently. "You silly goose," he said, half laughing, "just when I thought that you couldn't be more of an adorable fool, you had to prove me wrong yet again." (She had to snort at that, even through her ridiculous tears.) "I love you, Josephine March. At this point, it's all but engraved in stone. I love you and I want to hear you say that you love me too. That's all I could ask of anybody I love. Especially when I love them this completely."
She was beginning to smile herself, then, though disbelief still caught her by the throat, even as she shifted closer, allowing him to more properly hold her. "If... if it's engraved on a tablet somewhere, my boy, you must promise to show it to me eventually. It might be the only way I'll ever believe you when you say such mad things."
Because it had still seemed too good to be real. When, exactly, had she ever gotten just what she wanted? All her life, what she loved seemed to want to leave her. Forever looking after her little Beth, finding a way to be happy in Europe, being a writer that mattered in the world... dreams, all of them, just like loving Laurie had been. And none of them ones that had come true either.
Why would this be any more permanent? What could make this more real?
From the sigh he gave, Laurie was clearly annoyed, though his fingertips were undeniably loving as they moved against her face, as intimate as the next kiss he placed against her crooked beak. "If I have to act as Moses himself and seek out a burning bush to prove it, I swear Jo, I'll do so. But haven't you realized already? All this time when I was courting your sister and being an undeniable monster to you-- Lord, Jo, I only acted that way because I was trying to stop loving you, because I thought I had no hope and that way would lead to more misery. I had convinced myself I had to hate you to forget you, and for that reason, I wanted you to hate me too. But if... if you feel something for me as well... if what we shared in your attic meant anything at all..."
Feeling suddenly shy, she had chose to close her eyes momentarily, to rest her forehead against her-- she no longer knew how quite to describe him-- her friend's cheek so she could evade that piercing gaze of him for a moment longer. "I'm... I'm just glad you don't honestly despise me, Teddy. For some time, I truly thought you did. God, sometimes it seemed as though you were only a few minutes away from leaving me tied to a set of train-tracks with no rescue in sight. And when you saw Fred speaking to me about Europe..."
Shame burning in his eyes, Laurie had grasped her hand in his, bending his lips so that they could trace their warm surface over every one of her slim fingers in an apology he clearly thought mere words could not make up for. And it was only when she was slightly breathless by the stir of his warm lips against her shivering skin did he direct those inescapable eyes towards her, accompanied by a beseeching smile. "Then you must forgive your boy for being an utter fool. I was jealous, Jo-- utterly and completely consumed by it. I thought he had somehow done what I couldn't and managed to capture your heart. The very thought of it tore me apart, nerve by nerve, until I couldn't think properly."
Even with her breath trapped in her throat, she had almost laughed-- before she realized how very sincere he truly was. "Oh, Teddy, you didn't! Oh, I can't believe you actually thought...! How could someone like Fred, someone who could have his pick of women, actually decide to pay so much attention to a rattled old spinster like me?"
Laurie flashed a rather rakish smile at her in turn, one that was accompanied by the sudden stroke his fingers against the tight curve of her jaw. "Oh, I don't know... I don't think I do so poorly by women myself and I chose you, after all. Twice, even. Needn't that count for something?"
It was enough to make Jo flush a furious red and stamp on his foot, which Laurie took with good nature. "Oh, don't start saying such ridiculous things when we're being serious, Teddy! And dear Fred and I are simply friends. He was... well, he was a help to me when we were quarreling the most. When he offered to take me to Europe, it was as a companion to his sister, not... not in..."
Not in the way that Teddy had offered. Not as a new bride on her honeymoon, traveling in her marital suite.
The sudden darkening of Laurie's eyes and the lowering of long, sooty lashes showed how clearly the thought had overtaken him as well. But after a long pause, he continued speaking solemnly. "Be as it may, it doesn't alter the fact that I was a fool and a brute to you both. Jealousy did not alter my character for the better. I hated every moment he spent with you, begrudged every touch and word that passed between you. And I did this even as I courted your sister while trying to pretend that towards you, I felt nothing. Can you ever forgive your foolish boy, my Jo? Dare I hope slightly?"
She could. Lord yes, she could. Which was why, eyes shining, she had eased towards him for the first time for a kiss... one she had thought would be quick, tender and affectionate but soon turned into a thing of low, raw animal hunger. She had assumed it would be over after a brief, delicate moment, as their first had-- but Jo soon found herself pressed against a majestic old oak as Laurie took his time exploring her mouth, his hands low on her hips and her own fingers buried in his curly hair, shaking wrists rattling against his skull in a way that might have hurt.
Something very hoarse and needy in Jo told her that he didn't seem to mind at all and thanked him for it profusely.
His kiss was slow and tender, torrid and a terror, and Jo half thought she might very well disintegrate completely as he restlessly ran his fingers up and down her sides, his body pressing against her as the heat within them built up to an crescendo they had not the means to overcome. And even as she melted against him, as pliable as she had ever been in all of her restlessly stubbornly life, she realized that this was the first time he had ever kissed her as though time alone was of no essence, as though all the world could very well wait while he held her close enough to feel her heart-beat parallel to his own, as though he was finally reassured that she would not pull away or leave in the precious moments that came after.
And indeed she didn't, though she had flushed and laughed and ran her fingers over kiss-swollen lips after, not quite sure what had happened in their embrace but all too aware that it had only ended out of propriety. "Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! But only if..." (And this was interrupted by another gentle, lingering kiss that brought a most becoming flush to her lover's-- her lover's!-- face.) "...If you can forgive me in turn for what I did to you in these woods three years ago. Oh, Teddy... I've hurt you so, far more and far longer than you hurt me. If there was something I could do to help you now..."
He interrupted her by placing another fierce, swift kiss on her lips, one that he seemed to force himself not to prolong. "There is, my loveliest. There is. Say that you'll help me make up for the past. Say that you'll take me back. Say that you'll let me court you properly-- in the way I should have done all along. I don't need you to agree to marry me now, Jo. I know that it shall take time enough for the memory of my foolhardiness to wear off. But if you could just give me the chance to undo what I've done wrong..."
Confused, dizzy and somehow deliciously disoriented, Jo let her eyes slide shut and her cheek come to a rest against Laurie's shoulder, happy but also feeling a little lost. "But Teddy... my sister turned you down just now. Do you really think now is the best time to think of marriage again? Don't you need to... to..." (She was stumbling over the words-- oh, why could she think of them so well when writing, only to have them abandon her when she needed them the most?) "To... to heal a little bit more, before starting it again all over?"
But instead of pausing to think about her idea, as she had half-hoped and half-feared, her Laurie simply laughed again and nuzzled his cheek to hers. "Well, they do say laughter is the best medicine, and no one make me laugh as much as you do." (She made a face at that, which punctuated his point with his chuckle.) "Dearest, what could help me get over my tragic inability to make Amy mine as your antics would? What else could make me heal?"
Jo couldn't quite decide whether she was more annoyed or amused by his ridiculous answer. "Oh, Teddy, please be serious! I mean..." And then, more seriously, she pulled back to look at him carefully, her voice becoming a little softer and far more hesitant than he was used to hearing. "I mean... I haven't gotten any prettier over the years." (He looked ready to interrupt angrily at that but she firmly shut him up with a finger to his lips, which diverted him well.) "I truly haven't gotten any more better or beautiful. I'm still a wild mess at parties, I still have the manners of a stunned elephant and I still have the cooking skills of a dead sea-gull. I can't dance, sing, play or be a good society wife. If we were to marry-- if, if you truly wanted me-- Teddy, I can't give you what whatever it is that your wife should have. I'll just end up embarrassing you!"
And all along, even as he had kissed her, some small, fearful part of Jo had been waiting, just waiting, for him to prove her right. For him to admit that what she said made all the sense in the world. For him to nod and turn away his incomparable eyes and tell her, Yes, Jo, You're right. As a chum and a friend, you may be fine, but who on earth would consider you a good wife? I should go back into the house and beg your sister to take me back after all. She would suit me properly.
But that part of her would be disappointed yet, even as the rest of her soared swiftly. For her Laurie's gaze were full of a love that both dwarfed her and lifted her up when he peered into her eyes after she finished speaking, his lips still wet from her own and his fingers gentle against her shoulders.
And then he spoke and she realized why it was that this was the man she would live and die for, in all the years she had left to her.
"You have yourself, Jo, and that's all I need from all the world before us. I've loved you since I clapped eyes on you and there are no arguments in the world that you could make to dissuade me from such a thought. Because I need you. Because I adore you! Because you can shake sense in me, no matter how demented I may be. Because the only way I have to measure time is by being and not being with you. And because if you will not let me love you, Josephine Marsh, then all the world is a jest that I've already lost, and nothing else within it can possibly be worth winning."
As if to assure her that that was so, he cupped her shaking little hands in his face once more and pressed his lips to hers, murmuring against her mouth as though to cleave her to what was absolute. "I will love you until the day I die, you mad, bizarre, brilliant little woman. Swear that you'll be kind to me just this once, Jo. Swear that you'll take a chance after all."
And when her upturned lips met his in a kiss, she assented in a way that mere words could not hope to match.
***
5.
All of that had happened only three months ago. And a mere three days ago, after a few sweet, awkward months of a true courting that had both confused and comforted the rest of the family, they had finally wed near the old March home, her father bewildered and her mother bemused and his grandfather simply beaming. Even Amy-- dearest Amy!-- had looked more wry and tolerant than shocked and heart-broken, calmly dismissing Fred from their home soon afterward and rather dryly discussing opportunities to study art in America that her new brother-in-law might want to bank-roll after he was done getting married. With a particular woman friend of hers from Europe in tow to keep her virtue intact, naturally.
("Well," Laurie had said to Jo soon after, "I know I owe my present happiness to your sister's tolerance as much as anything else... but I can't help but be surprised by her particular guest. Although I suppose now my masculine pride is well assuaged by knowing just why she turned her down. Apparently, excellent insight into my heart wasn't the only reason she refused my-- and even Fred's-- ring."
"Hmmm?" Jo had asked, looking up from her frantic search for a quill to finish writing guest invitations with. "Teddy, what on earth do you mean?"
His only reply had been a bemused quirk of his lips. "If you don't understand yet, it isn't my place to tell you, dear heart." And before she had been able to needle what made him laugh so out of him, Laurie had fallen on her with a flurry of kisses that had knocked away all other thoughts with ease.)
And so, she and her love had wed in a ceremony that would have scandalized Aunt March if she had deigned to come, what with the bride being so giddy that she rushed through vows she had written herself with loving haste and the groom waltzing around in such tender disarray that he had been barely able to speak. They had nibbled white cake from each other's trembling fingers and danced with him compensating for her ungainly figure and held hands under the table as their guests had greeted them, looking surprised but also pleased. And afterward, their first few days of wedded bliss had consisted of an array of visits and parties in and around the March's house and his grandfather's manse, which had necessarily curtailed the sincere (if nerve-wracking) intimacy that marriage would naturally bring them.
But three days into their mad escapade into marital bliss, they had finally moved into a temporary house that they would occupy as a young couple before moving to New York permanently. And all of the above and more was why Jo was now finding herself hovering anxiously over a reflection that may have worn the gown of suitable for a wedding night but with a bride within it that looked desperately ill at ease.
Which was the dilemma, of course, that had brought on this evening's uncharacteristic melancholy over her want of beauty and complete lack of preparation for what lay ahead.
On the whole, Jo truly wasn't a vain person. She had her pride, of course, and it was a pride that could burn fiercely, especially when it came to matters of her person and writing. She managed her work with a fierceness that often made Laurie tease her so, but respect her integrity all the same. And when it came to being true to her own inner nature, Shakespeare himself might have admired her bone-deep refusal to pretend to be something other than what she was in her entirety.
But when it came to looking at herself in her reflection and finding something wanting...
Well, that wasn't exactly unusual for Jo. She had lived her twenty-two years on earth very certain in the knowledge that she was the least fetching of all the girls in her family. Meg had her elegant figure, Amy her gold-tinged form, and even Beth had had something of a medieval angel about her dear, delicate face. Only Jo had come into the circle of her family with a portable loveliness that could be easily traded for train-tickets.
Her lack of beauty had never bothered Jo greatly before, not when she knew she was loved and loved well by people who could care less about the crook in her nose, or the unwieldy slant of her brow, or even her generally shapeless waist. In fact, the only time she could recall being greatly cross was when her Aunt had spurned her as a companion in favor of the prettier Amy, an injustice she had burned at at the time but reconciled to eventually.
Most of the time, Jo dealt with her looks with far, far more ease. But then, she had never been married before either-- and most definitely not to a man who had almost certainly been with other women before-- far prettier women, most likely, with gold-spun hair and green-hazel eyes and the sort of luxurious figure that could have waltzed through a handsome young emperor's royal harem without a braided hair out of place--
Oh, Jo so hated having a vivid imagination some days.
Well, it wasn't hard to feel both old doubts and new insecurities rushing back to her, not after Amy had whispered stories of Laurie's supposed debaucheries in Europe whilst he had set about on his rage-fueled courting. Scrambled news of some of the madness of Europe and Jo's own active thoughts had filled in the rest, and the moments she hadn't spent over the last few days with Laurie actively pressed against her flesh had been spent worrying about what to do when they actually... they honestly would...
With a groan of despair, Jo turned from her reflection in the mirror and buried her face in her hands. If she couldn't even say it, how could she be brave enough to go through it?
Jo curled her fingers against the cool, silver mirror and plunged on desperately.
She had spent far too much time worried about what would happen when she and Laurie would-- say it! albeit not aloud!-- finally consummate their marriage.
After all, she was nobody's idea of perfect loveliness and she hadn't even been able to dance with her husband at the reception gracefully. She knew feminine grace and beauty had a vast something to do with what a man and his wife were expected to do, which only made her all the more nervous of the night ahead. After all, if she lacked those qualities in her characteristically flamboyant way, what could possibly make her think that laying with her husband tonight would be nothing short of disastrous?
It was one thing, of course, to indulge in a few kisses here and there, knowing there would be nothing between them that would go beyond it. Even when those kisses had been-- and yes, once she ceased flushing over it, she could admit it-- even when Laurie's lips and hands had brought her to the edges of ecstasy and madness, there had been a peculiar sort of safety in knowing that the edges were all that there was to be skirted. They may have spent hours over the last few months by themselves-- hours that they had spent laughing and reminiscing and caressing and touching, as though mere words would mean nothing without punctuation in the form of touch-- but those were somehow safe hours all the same. And even in those moments when Jo had thought he might just drown within her, where his hands had defied propriety by reaching beneath her skirts, where he had shocked her by caressing her ankles as he had ran his lips against a pale insole he had liberated from her slippers, his lips tracing the line of her stocking as his glittering eyes slowly caught hers--
Even during those times, Jo had known he would never press her far beyond society's demands, even as it had seemed to grow harder and harder for him to shift his hips from hers during their mad and prolonged bouts of rollicking half-love. After all, she had had the right, the responsibility even, to push his hands and lips and dear, wanting face away from her whenever he went too far. It may have meant ignoring his sad, doleful sighs as he had done so-- and that strange, tender ache that he stirred in her skin-- but after a few months of Laurie's intimate courting, she had rather mastered the actions.
But Jo had never before had to confront actually performing for him, actually exposing herself to him, actually allowing him to hold her with the clear goal of his release in sight-- all while knowing that if she fumbled even once--
The eyes she gazed at in the mirror were now wide and worried, desperation and desire twined together.
What if she lay with him and he didn't care for it? What if he saw her fully and he realized this wasn't what he wanted?
What if she disappointed him enough to make him dread being with her for all the rest of his existence?
She wanted so much to be a good wife, a loving bride, to make make him laugh against her throat and break their silences with his pleased sighs and murmurs, that devilish dark spark of mischief burning bright in his gaze again. She just wished she knew how to bring it about when she truly needed it, rather than hope that chance and her unreliable instincts could end up pleasuring him.
For all the love stories that she had written, Jo knew truly little about fulfilling the appetites of men. And never had she felt the sting of lacking that secret knowledge as deeply as she currently did.
But after another moment, Jo fixed her eyes upon her vanity mirror again, taking in a deep, solemn breath. She could not allow this to defeat her any more than any other trouble in her life had. She had faced and conquered far darker dragons, and she could endure this strange torment. After all, whatever else he was, Laurie was and had always been a man of a deep and sincere passion that she had yet to repay him. In turn, whatever else she was, Jo could not stand to be a complete coward-- not again, not when it came to him. And though part of her might have quailed as she thought of what her husband would think when he finally saw her naked before him, bare to his view and ready for his touch, Jo knew she had to confront the moment soon enough.
She might be gawky and and awkward and undeserving of her Laurie... but still she was his, as he had always been her. She always had been his, even before she could bring herself to realize it. And right now, she wanted to be all of his in a way that defied even her well-worn fears.
So, after giving herself one last look of desperation and courage in the mirror and curling her damp fingers around her lap, she called out for her husband... who, after all, had already been waiting three long years for this (wonderful? terrifying?) moment.
"Teddy," she said, in a firm, clear voice that thankfully did not give away how shot her nerves were. "Teddy, I'm done dressing for bed. You can come in."
And after a moment's worth of shivering anticipation, her husband, her best friend and the man she had been waiting for all her life finally, finally did.
***
Author's Note: Oh Jo. Oh Laurie. I think the more I write the two of these crazy kids together, the more hopelessly I fall in love with their adorably mismatched relationship. ♥
In any case, comments and constructive criticisms are much adored and cherished by me as a writer! I don't think I would love working on this series nearly as much without knowing I have such a brilliant readership in this very erudite fandom. ;)
And an enormous, enormous, enormous amounts of thanks have to go again to all the lovely readers who offered me such kind words and helpful advice from chapter 1. I'm a fairly introverted writer in that I love to get into the interior thoughts and feelings of my characters, but I completely do agree that writing about Jo and Laurie only gets better after show-casing their interactions. So if my readers don't mind me asking, I'd love to know what you think of Jo and Laurie's interactions in the first part of the chapter. Do they make sense together as a couple? Did they get together too quickly? Do you think there's actual heat and sexual tension in their love scenes? Or have I gone too prim and Victorian in an attempt to capture them?
And I have had very poor luck getting in touch with people about chapter 2, mostly because I was buried in a mound of work and kept going on AIM at odd hours. (Whaddya mean nobody else logs in for three minutes at 1 in the morning?) But I am definitely going to try and get touch with as many people as possible for chapter 3! I have to dive inside Laurie's head since (to be a little gauche), he'd be a much better narrator than a sex scene than Jo. ("My word! His-- oh dear, I'm blushing thinking about it-- just touched me in my-- I can't even say it!" Heh.) However, I've never been the best at handling a male POV and Laurie's voice, much as I love him as a character, is stubbornly refusing to communicate clearly with me. I'll try to get chapter 3 out within the next two weeks but I can sadly make no promises! And any thoughts on what HE would be like would be much appreciated. ♥
Furthermore, a great deal of thanks goes to everyone who offered to help me with conceptualizing this story and who gave me so much wonderful, constructive criticism. You have all really helped me realize how important building on the characterization is when penning an AU and I hope chapter 2 really reflects my building on top of that. ♥
So, without rambling on still more, we may as well go on to...
Title: A Night To Remember, Chapter 2
Fandom: Little Women
Series: A Night to Remember
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Amy, Fred, Cast
Rating: R, Later NC-17
Summary: She had told him: "I can't betray my sister like this." And he had looked at her with those dark, frantic eyes and whispered: "You are going to be the death of me." Jo, Laurie, and what could have been and might still be.
Note: If you can't handle fairly explicit future descriptions of beloved children's book characters having sex, this may not be the fic for you. Not that I blame you for misgivings, naturally!
***
4.
Ever the gentleman, Laurie proposed to her sister soon afterward, after three terrible days of allowing Jo to look and look and look at him, and wonder why it had all gone so wrong, slipping through her fingers so soon. And on the day when he finally went up to Amy's room with a ring box in his hand and a glaze to his eyes, Jo had exiled herself out of the doors, braving the wind and wet rocks in search of shelter from her feelings. Leaving behind even her new companion, she had rambled through the woods in a listless daze, feeling vaguely as though the sickness that Amy had suffered had settled on her by some strange transitive act, wondering if it was only fair to feel as though her heart had been smashed open by someone who she had hurt previously.
He loved her. She couldn't deny it to herself anymore. He said he loved her completely.
She loved him. She knew that now. She knew that she loved him thoroughly.
And he was going to marry her sister, even though what they knew now made the act seem like blasphemy.
But it was still the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do. If they had any honor left to them, they would let the marriage Laurie had sought after so proceed quickly.
They couldn't smash Amy's heart, after all. Not after an illness that had nearly carried her away from them. Not after these months of his courtship. Not after the long years of the two of them being estranged, he hating and she repressing, moving from each other hastily.
In light of that, a few moments of stolen tenderness shouldn't mean anything.
He loved her and she loved him and it didn't matter, it couldn't matter, they would have to forget it completely. And with her face buried in her hands and her ears filled with the sound of her muffled sobs, she only realized that he had caught up to her last when his gentle hand had touched her back, eased to her shoulder, cupped the nape of her neck as though in search of new discovery.
She had known the heat of his hand just as well as she knew she could not enjoy it any longer. And she had not even been able to look at him when she had asked, in a muffled voice she could barely recognize as her own, "Have you two decided when you will be married?"
"Jo," he simply said in reply, and his voice had a strange sort of breathlessness to it, as though he himself were still in a dream. "Jo, Jo-- my love, my dearest! Jo, please look at me!"
Caught by her own morbid curiosity, she had, even as her eyes had blurred with further, treacherous tears. She could still remember being struck by the wild rapture in eyes she had thought would hold only sorrow, that were instead filled by both hope and fear.
His voice had been startlingly soft when he had next spoken, the pads of damp fingers already wiping away the sullen trails of her tears. She could still keenly remember the confusion she had felt, wondering why he hadn't been as broken as she was, wondering if she'd misread their second kiss in the first place, if there was something she was still missing.
But then he had spoken and she had understood why his voice had been so warm, why his eyes had been so tender, and why even the fingers framing her face had seemed so at ease.
"Jo, she refused me," Laurie began, and her grave gray eyes widened abruptly. "Your sister-- our Amy-- absolutely refused me! She told me that marrying me would be folly for both she and I, and that I should direct my question somewhere else entirely. And all I want to know now is if you..." He lost his voice for a moment, his eyes snaring within them hers, his tongue running against his full bottom lip nervously. "If you will give me a similar answer, if I-- if I repeat my question here."
For a moment, she couldn't quite understand what he was saying, her mind still filled thoughts of her sister's refusal, of everything she had expected and feared suddenly, abruptly changing. She couldn't even shake the shudder from her voice when she found it. "I... Teddy... Teddy, please don't toy with me now! Are you... did Amy truly...?"
Any misgivings she might have still had were easily washed away by the look on his face now, as he moved his handsome face closer to hers, his color high and his lips curving into that blush-worthy smile, his voice was sweet and throaty. "She was meant to be an painter after all, my dear girl. Like any good artist, she knew what was in our hearts earlier than we did. She told me she didn't quite have the energy to fend off the ridiculous charade of a courting I was heaping on her for the longest time but... she does now. She said that she knew I wanted something else, and truthfully, that made her want something else as well. I'm a free man, dearest. I can do anything! I mean... I mean, as long as..."
She could read the sudden hitch in his voice as though she were a fortune-teller. All of a sudden, it was so clear and easy.
"As long as we love each other?" she whispered, her unsteady hands coming to rest against the ones that were now caressing her swollen cheeks, in a clasp both tender and sincere. "Teddy... Teddy, I..." Another ridiculous welling of tears came to her eyes, though she hastily wiped them away before they could impede her again. "I... I know what I feel for you. But how do you really feel about me?"
At first, he seemed almost awestruck that she would have to ask such a question... though this clearly gave way to a laughing incredulity which led him to bend his curly head down to her lower one so he could kiss her wrinkled brow gently. "You silly goose," he said, half laughing, "just when I thought that you couldn't be more of an adorable fool, you had to prove me wrong yet again." (She had to snort at that, even through her ridiculous tears.) "I love you, Josephine March. At this point, it's all but engraved in stone. I love you and I want to hear you say that you love me too. That's all I could ask of anybody I love. Especially when I love them this completely."
She was beginning to smile herself, then, though disbelief still caught her by the throat, even as she shifted closer, allowing him to more properly hold her. "If... if it's engraved on a tablet somewhere, my boy, you must promise to show it to me eventually. It might be the only way I'll ever believe you when you say such mad things."
Because it had still seemed too good to be real. When, exactly, had she ever gotten just what she wanted? All her life, what she loved seemed to want to leave her. Forever looking after her little Beth, finding a way to be happy in Europe, being a writer that mattered in the world... dreams, all of them, just like loving Laurie had been. And none of them ones that had come true either.
Why would this be any more permanent? What could make this more real?
From the sigh he gave, Laurie was clearly annoyed, though his fingertips were undeniably loving as they moved against her face, as intimate as the next kiss he placed against her crooked beak. "If I have to act as Moses himself and seek out a burning bush to prove it, I swear Jo, I'll do so. But haven't you realized already? All this time when I was courting your sister and being an undeniable monster to you-- Lord, Jo, I only acted that way because I was trying to stop loving you, because I thought I had no hope and that way would lead to more misery. I had convinced myself I had to hate you to forget you, and for that reason, I wanted you to hate me too. But if... if you feel something for me as well... if what we shared in your attic meant anything at all..."
Feeling suddenly shy, she had chose to close her eyes momentarily, to rest her forehead against her-- she no longer knew how quite to describe him-- her friend's cheek so she could evade that piercing gaze of him for a moment longer. "I'm... I'm just glad you don't honestly despise me, Teddy. For some time, I truly thought you did. God, sometimes it seemed as though you were only a few minutes away from leaving me tied to a set of train-tracks with no rescue in sight. And when you saw Fred speaking to me about Europe..."
Shame burning in his eyes, Laurie had grasped her hand in his, bending his lips so that they could trace their warm surface over every one of her slim fingers in an apology he clearly thought mere words could not make up for. And it was only when she was slightly breathless by the stir of his warm lips against her shivering skin did he direct those inescapable eyes towards her, accompanied by a beseeching smile. "Then you must forgive your boy for being an utter fool. I was jealous, Jo-- utterly and completely consumed by it. I thought he had somehow done what I couldn't and managed to capture your heart. The very thought of it tore me apart, nerve by nerve, until I couldn't think properly."
Even with her breath trapped in her throat, she had almost laughed-- before she realized how very sincere he truly was. "Oh, Teddy, you didn't! Oh, I can't believe you actually thought...! How could someone like Fred, someone who could have his pick of women, actually decide to pay so much attention to a rattled old spinster like me?"
Laurie flashed a rather rakish smile at her in turn, one that was accompanied by the sudden stroke his fingers against the tight curve of her jaw. "Oh, I don't know... I don't think I do so poorly by women myself and I chose you, after all. Twice, even. Needn't that count for something?"
It was enough to make Jo flush a furious red and stamp on his foot, which Laurie took with good nature. "Oh, don't start saying such ridiculous things when we're being serious, Teddy! And dear Fred and I are simply friends. He was... well, he was a help to me when we were quarreling the most. When he offered to take me to Europe, it was as a companion to his sister, not... not in..."
Not in the way that Teddy had offered. Not as a new bride on her honeymoon, traveling in her marital suite.
The sudden darkening of Laurie's eyes and the lowering of long, sooty lashes showed how clearly the thought had overtaken him as well. But after a long pause, he continued speaking solemnly. "Be as it may, it doesn't alter the fact that I was a fool and a brute to you both. Jealousy did not alter my character for the better. I hated every moment he spent with you, begrudged every touch and word that passed between you. And I did this even as I courted your sister while trying to pretend that towards you, I felt nothing. Can you ever forgive your foolish boy, my Jo? Dare I hope slightly?"
She could. Lord yes, she could. Which was why, eyes shining, she had eased towards him for the first time for a kiss... one she had thought would be quick, tender and affectionate but soon turned into a thing of low, raw animal hunger. She had assumed it would be over after a brief, delicate moment, as their first had-- but Jo soon found herself pressed against a majestic old oak as Laurie took his time exploring her mouth, his hands low on her hips and her own fingers buried in his curly hair, shaking wrists rattling against his skull in a way that might have hurt.
Something very hoarse and needy in Jo told her that he didn't seem to mind at all and thanked him for it profusely.
His kiss was slow and tender, torrid and a terror, and Jo half thought she might very well disintegrate completely as he restlessly ran his fingers up and down her sides, his body pressing against her as the heat within them built up to an crescendo they had not the means to overcome. And even as she melted against him, as pliable as she had ever been in all of her restlessly stubbornly life, she realized that this was the first time he had ever kissed her as though time alone was of no essence, as though all the world could very well wait while he held her close enough to feel her heart-beat parallel to his own, as though he was finally reassured that she would not pull away or leave in the precious moments that came after.
And indeed she didn't, though she had flushed and laughed and ran her fingers over kiss-swollen lips after, not quite sure what had happened in their embrace but all too aware that it had only ended out of propriety. "Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! But only if..." (And this was interrupted by another gentle, lingering kiss that brought a most becoming flush to her lover's-- her lover's!-- face.) "...If you can forgive me in turn for what I did to you in these woods three years ago. Oh, Teddy... I've hurt you so, far more and far longer than you hurt me. If there was something I could do to help you now..."
He interrupted her by placing another fierce, swift kiss on her lips, one that he seemed to force himself not to prolong. "There is, my loveliest. There is. Say that you'll help me make up for the past. Say that you'll take me back. Say that you'll let me court you properly-- in the way I should have done all along. I don't need you to agree to marry me now, Jo. I know that it shall take time enough for the memory of my foolhardiness to wear off. But if you could just give me the chance to undo what I've done wrong..."
Confused, dizzy and somehow deliciously disoriented, Jo let her eyes slide shut and her cheek come to a rest against Laurie's shoulder, happy but also feeling a little lost. "But Teddy... my sister turned you down just now. Do you really think now is the best time to think of marriage again? Don't you need to... to..." (She was stumbling over the words-- oh, why could she think of them so well when writing, only to have them abandon her when she needed them the most?) "To... to heal a little bit more, before starting it again all over?"
But instead of pausing to think about her idea, as she had half-hoped and half-feared, her Laurie simply laughed again and nuzzled his cheek to hers. "Well, they do say laughter is the best medicine, and no one make me laugh as much as you do." (She made a face at that, which punctuated his point with his chuckle.) "Dearest, what could help me get over my tragic inability to make Amy mine as your antics would? What else could make me heal?"
Jo couldn't quite decide whether she was more annoyed or amused by his ridiculous answer. "Oh, Teddy, please be serious! I mean..." And then, more seriously, she pulled back to look at him carefully, her voice becoming a little softer and far more hesitant than he was used to hearing. "I mean... I haven't gotten any prettier over the years." (He looked ready to interrupt angrily at that but she firmly shut him up with a finger to his lips, which diverted him well.) "I truly haven't gotten any more better or beautiful. I'm still a wild mess at parties, I still have the manners of a stunned elephant and I still have the cooking skills of a dead sea-gull. I can't dance, sing, play or be a good society wife. If we were to marry-- if, if you truly wanted me-- Teddy, I can't give you what whatever it is that your wife should have. I'll just end up embarrassing you!"
And all along, even as he had kissed her, some small, fearful part of Jo had been waiting, just waiting, for him to prove her right. For him to admit that what she said made all the sense in the world. For him to nod and turn away his incomparable eyes and tell her, Yes, Jo, You're right. As a chum and a friend, you may be fine, but who on earth would consider you a good wife? I should go back into the house and beg your sister to take me back after all. She would suit me properly.
But that part of her would be disappointed yet, even as the rest of her soared swiftly. For her Laurie's gaze were full of a love that both dwarfed her and lifted her up when he peered into her eyes after she finished speaking, his lips still wet from her own and his fingers gentle against her shoulders.
And then he spoke and she realized why it was that this was the man she would live and die for, in all the years she had left to her.
"You have yourself, Jo, and that's all I need from all the world before us. I've loved you since I clapped eyes on you and there are no arguments in the world that you could make to dissuade me from such a thought. Because I need you. Because I adore you! Because you can shake sense in me, no matter how demented I may be. Because the only way I have to measure time is by being and not being with you. And because if you will not let me love you, Josephine Marsh, then all the world is a jest that I've already lost, and nothing else within it can possibly be worth winning."
As if to assure her that that was so, he cupped her shaking little hands in his face once more and pressed his lips to hers, murmuring against her mouth as though to cleave her to what was absolute. "I will love you until the day I die, you mad, bizarre, brilliant little woman. Swear that you'll be kind to me just this once, Jo. Swear that you'll take a chance after all."
And when her upturned lips met his in a kiss, she assented in a way that mere words could not hope to match.
***
5.
All of that had happened only three months ago. And a mere three days ago, after a few sweet, awkward months of a true courting that had both confused and comforted the rest of the family, they had finally wed near the old March home, her father bewildered and her mother bemused and his grandfather simply beaming. Even Amy-- dearest Amy!-- had looked more wry and tolerant than shocked and heart-broken, calmly dismissing Fred from their home soon afterward and rather dryly discussing opportunities to study art in America that her new brother-in-law might want to bank-roll after he was done getting married. With a particular woman friend of hers from Europe in tow to keep her virtue intact, naturally.
("Well," Laurie had said to Jo soon after, "I know I owe my present happiness to your sister's tolerance as much as anything else... but I can't help but be surprised by her particular guest. Although I suppose now my masculine pride is well assuaged by knowing just why she turned her down. Apparently, excellent insight into my heart wasn't the only reason she refused my-- and even Fred's-- ring."
"Hmmm?" Jo had asked, looking up from her frantic search for a quill to finish writing guest invitations with. "Teddy, what on earth do you mean?"
His only reply had been a bemused quirk of his lips. "If you don't understand yet, it isn't my place to tell you, dear heart." And before she had been able to needle what made him laugh so out of him, Laurie had fallen on her with a flurry of kisses that had knocked away all other thoughts with ease.)
And so, she and her love had wed in a ceremony that would have scandalized Aunt March if she had deigned to come, what with the bride being so giddy that she rushed through vows she had written herself with loving haste and the groom waltzing around in such tender disarray that he had been barely able to speak. They had nibbled white cake from each other's trembling fingers and danced with him compensating for her ungainly figure and held hands under the table as their guests had greeted them, looking surprised but also pleased. And afterward, their first few days of wedded bliss had consisted of an array of visits and parties in and around the March's house and his grandfather's manse, which had necessarily curtailed the sincere (if nerve-wracking) intimacy that marriage would naturally bring them.
But three days into their mad escapade into marital bliss, they had finally moved into a temporary house that they would occupy as a young couple before moving to New York permanently. And all of the above and more was why Jo was now finding herself hovering anxiously over a reflection that may have worn the gown of suitable for a wedding night but with a bride within it that looked desperately ill at ease.
Which was the dilemma, of course, that had brought on this evening's uncharacteristic melancholy over her want of beauty and complete lack of preparation for what lay ahead.
On the whole, Jo truly wasn't a vain person. She had her pride, of course, and it was a pride that could burn fiercely, especially when it came to matters of her person and writing. She managed her work with a fierceness that often made Laurie tease her so, but respect her integrity all the same. And when it came to being true to her own inner nature, Shakespeare himself might have admired her bone-deep refusal to pretend to be something other than what she was in her entirety.
But when it came to looking at herself in her reflection and finding something wanting...
Well, that wasn't exactly unusual for Jo. She had lived her twenty-two years on earth very certain in the knowledge that she was the least fetching of all the girls in her family. Meg had her elegant figure, Amy her gold-tinged form, and even Beth had had something of a medieval angel about her dear, delicate face. Only Jo had come into the circle of her family with a portable loveliness that could be easily traded for train-tickets.
Her lack of beauty had never bothered Jo greatly before, not when she knew she was loved and loved well by people who could care less about the crook in her nose, or the unwieldy slant of her brow, or even her generally shapeless waist. In fact, the only time she could recall being greatly cross was when her Aunt had spurned her as a companion in favor of the prettier Amy, an injustice she had burned at at the time but reconciled to eventually.
Most of the time, Jo dealt with her looks with far, far more ease. But then, she had never been married before either-- and most definitely not to a man who had almost certainly been with other women before-- far prettier women, most likely, with gold-spun hair and green-hazel eyes and the sort of luxurious figure that could have waltzed through a handsome young emperor's royal harem without a braided hair out of place--
Oh, Jo so hated having a vivid imagination some days.
Well, it wasn't hard to feel both old doubts and new insecurities rushing back to her, not after Amy had whispered stories of Laurie's supposed debaucheries in Europe whilst he had set about on his rage-fueled courting. Scrambled news of some of the madness of Europe and Jo's own active thoughts had filled in the rest, and the moments she hadn't spent over the last few days with Laurie actively pressed against her flesh had been spent worrying about what to do when they actually... they honestly would...
With a groan of despair, Jo turned from her reflection in the mirror and buried her face in her hands. If she couldn't even say it, how could she be brave enough to go through it?
Jo curled her fingers against the cool, silver mirror and plunged on desperately.
She had spent far too much time worried about what would happen when she and Laurie would-- say it! albeit not aloud!-- finally consummate their marriage.
After all, she was nobody's idea of perfect loveliness and she hadn't even been able to dance with her husband at the reception gracefully. She knew feminine grace and beauty had a vast something to do with what a man and his wife were expected to do, which only made her all the more nervous of the night ahead. After all, if she lacked those qualities in her characteristically flamboyant way, what could possibly make her think that laying with her husband tonight would be nothing short of disastrous?
It was one thing, of course, to indulge in a few kisses here and there, knowing there would be nothing between them that would go beyond it. Even when those kisses had been-- and yes, once she ceased flushing over it, she could admit it-- even when Laurie's lips and hands had brought her to the edges of ecstasy and madness, there had been a peculiar sort of safety in knowing that the edges were all that there was to be skirted. They may have spent hours over the last few months by themselves-- hours that they had spent laughing and reminiscing and caressing and touching, as though mere words would mean nothing without punctuation in the form of touch-- but those were somehow safe hours all the same. And even in those moments when Jo had thought he might just drown within her, where his hands had defied propriety by reaching beneath her skirts, where he had shocked her by caressing her ankles as he had ran his lips against a pale insole he had liberated from her slippers, his lips tracing the line of her stocking as his glittering eyes slowly caught hers--
Even during those times, Jo had known he would never press her far beyond society's demands, even as it had seemed to grow harder and harder for him to shift his hips from hers during their mad and prolonged bouts of rollicking half-love. After all, she had had the right, the responsibility even, to push his hands and lips and dear, wanting face away from her whenever he went too far. It may have meant ignoring his sad, doleful sighs as he had done so-- and that strange, tender ache that he stirred in her skin-- but after a few months of Laurie's intimate courting, she had rather mastered the actions.
But Jo had never before had to confront actually performing for him, actually exposing herself to him, actually allowing him to hold her with the clear goal of his release in sight-- all while knowing that if she fumbled even once--
The eyes she gazed at in the mirror were now wide and worried, desperation and desire twined together.
What if she lay with him and he didn't care for it? What if he saw her fully and he realized this wasn't what he wanted?
What if she disappointed him enough to make him dread being with her for all the rest of his existence?
She wanted so much to be a good wife, a loving bride, to make make him laugh against her throat and break their silences with his pleased sighs and murmurs, that devilish dark spark of mischief burning bright in his gaze again. She just wished she knew how to bring it about when she truly needed it, rather than hope that chance and her unreliable instincts could end up pleasuring him.
For all the love stories that she had written, Jo knew truly little about fulfilling the appetites of men. And never had she felt the sting of lacking that secret knowledge as deeply as she currently did.
But after another moment, Jo fixed her eyes upon her vanity mirror again, taking in a deep, solemn breath. She could not allow this to defeat her any more than any other trouble in her life had. She had faced and conquered far darker dragons, and she could endure this strange torment. After all, whatever else he was, Laurie was and had always been a man of a deep and sincere passion that she had yet to repay him. In turn, whatever else she was, Jo could not stand to be a complete coward-- not again, not when it came to him. And though part of her might have quailed as she thought of what her husband would think when he finally saw her naked before him, bare to his view and ready for his touch, Jo knew she had to confront the moment soon enough.
She might be gawky and and awkward and undeserving of her Laurie... but still she was his, as he had always been her. She always had been his, even before she could bring herself to realize it. And right now, she wanted to be all of his in a way that defied even her well-worn fears.
So, after giving herself one last look of desperation and courage in the mirror and curling her damp fingers around her lap, she called out for her husband... who, after all, had already been waiting three long years for this (wonderful? terrifying?) moment.
"Teddy," she said, in a firm, clear voice that thankfully did not give away how shot her nerves were. "Teddy, I'm done dressing for bed. You can come in."
And after a moment's worth of shivering anticipation, her husband, her best friend and the man she had been waiting for all her life finally, finally did.
***
Author's Note: Oh Jo. Oh Laurie. I think the more I write the two of these crazy kids together, the more hopelessly I fall in love with their adorably mismatched relationship. ♥
In any case, comments and constructive criticisms are much adored and cherished by me as a writer! I don't think I would love working on this series nearly as much without knowing I have such a brilliant readership in this very erudite fandom. ;)
And an enormous, enormous, enormous amounts of thanks have to go again to all the lovely readers who offered me such kind words and helpful advice from chapter 1. I'm a fairly introverted writer in that I love to get into the interior thoughts and feelings of my characters, but I completely do agree that writing about Jo and Laurie only gets better after show-casing their interactions. So if my readers don't mind me asking, I'd love to know what you think of Jo and Laurie's interactions in the first part of the chapter. Do they make sense together as a couple? Did they get together too quickly? Do you think there's actual heat and sexual tension in their love scenes? Or have I gone too prim and Victorian in an attempt to capture them?
And I have had very poor luck getting in touch with people about chapter 2, mostly because I was buried in a mound of work and kept going on AIM at odd hours. (Whaddya mean nobody else logs in for three minutes at 1 in the morning?) But I am definitely going to try and get touch with as many people as possible for chapter 3! I have to dive inside Laurie's head since (to be a little gauche), he'd be a much better narrator than a sex scene than Jo. ("My word! His-- oh dear, I'm blushing thinking about it-- just touched me in my-- I can't even say it!" Heh.) However, I've never been the best at handling a male POV and Laurie's voice, much as I love him as a character, is stubbornly refusing to communicate clearly with me. I'll try to get chapter 3 out within the next two weeks but I can sadly make no promises! And any thoughts on what HE would be like would be much appreciated. ♥