Little Women Fic: A Night to Remember, Chapter 3 (Jo/Laurie)
My God. Can you believe that it's been almost exactly a month since I last updated this fanfic series? Or that it took me roughly four weeks of furious writerly struggles to finish up with roughly 10 pages consisting of Laurie thinking about Jo and wondering what on earth happened in their proposal scene? This was probably the trickiest chapter I've had to write so far, though I managed to get through it with the help of very kind Black Magik Woman and plenty of other reviewers for chapter 2 that I stupidly have not gotten back to yet. (Especially geniusgirl and chiana606 and dream's sister-- your reviews gave me so much to chew on, especially where Laurie was concerned.) But in any case, here's chapter 3 of ANtR. Please be kind and review if you enjoyed the story!
Also, as a quick note: I've also written for Black Magik Woman's round-robin Little Women fic Rigmarole. I completed chapter 5 and the fic has enough Jo/Laurie groping and basilisk-like staring from certain rigid, cranky, elderly relative to be a ridiculous amount of fun. Please feel free to check that out if the thought in any way appeals. ;)
Title: A Night To Remember, Chapter 3
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!
***
6.
Mr. Theodore Laurence, twenty-five years of age and at the height of his masculine beauty, could have served as the model of a perfect gentleman as he serenely waited in front of his bedroom doors for a night he had been longing for for the last three years.
Not an inch did he twitch as he stayed in his vigilant pose, waiting for the bride he had just well to call out presently. His face pleasant and his posture ideal, he let his close-cropped curls press against the wallpaper of the hallway as he crossed one long leg over another and settled his elegant pianist hands upon his narrow knees. In the flame-licked glow of the candles surrounding him, his bare face looked almost ethereally detached with the world, as though he were more concerned with trying to figure out how many angels could dance on the head of the pin than whether or not he would ever be let into his wife's bed this evening.
Anyone spying on him at the moment might actually have been surprised by the peace and calm that seemed to be radiating from him-- doubly so if the hypothetical spectator knew that the bride Mr. Laurence was waiting for was one he had mooned over for nearly half a decade, one who had turned down his first proposal, and one whose very presence often made him felt torn between luminous joy and a rather mischievous curiosity about much he could tease her before she erupted magnificently.
Indeed, any hypothetical being who thought him perfectly unruffled by anticipation of what might or might not come about once he stepped through those doors was quite in the wrong. For although Mr. Theodore Laurence, known more casually as Laurie and even tenderly as Teddy, might appear unruffled, he currently felt as though his stomach had been inverted so that it lay rather a ways away from him, possibly also being attacked by a legion of scimitar-wielding villains that his wife (his wife!) would have delighted in creating.
Never-mind his continental poise or his calm mien-- it was currently all that this scion of society could do now not to press his eager ear to the imposing doors separating him from his long-loved and hard-won bride, just to understand what on earth could be keeping her from allowing him to rush in presently.
Of course, he reminded himself, a wry smile settling on his previously unruffled features, it could be any number of things. His new wife could have been stricken by a mysterious case of amnesia that robbed her of any memory of the wedding that had been conducted merely three days ago, leaving her to wander off into the gardens attached to their little house to uncover clues about her mysterious identity. Alternately, she could have been abducted by a band of pirates in retaliation for some rather unflattering written portraits that she had finished the week before, necessitating her rescue by a husband who hoped she would reward him thereafter most dearly. Or-- and with a grin, Laurie had to admit that this was the likeliest the case-- his fair one could have fallen under the spell of yet another story and immediately began scribbling it to herself before she could lose the thread of it and deny the world something brilliant and possibly belligerent, as was her artistic duty.
Allowing his previously held posture of relaxation to slip into true ease for a minute, Laurie sighed in both contentment and exasperation, knowing that he would probably enter their bedroom for their connubial night after a half-hour of worry, only to find his new bride scribbling herself into an authorial frenzy. Instead of throwing themselves at each other with the mad elation he felt more than capable of every time he thought of her in his arms, he might well end up embracing a stack of tightly bound notebook sheets. For all he knew, their first true night as bride and groom might very well end with him helping her with the Latin conjugates of whatever stormy words ancient Christians might have tossed at their Roman lion-wranglers, or some other marvelously mad such thing.
But then, Laurie acknowledged with a slight twitch of his lips, such a possibility was a more than fair price to pay for falling in love with someone as resolutely her own woman as his Josephine insisted on being. No one who loved Mademoiselle March-- now Madame Josephine Laurence!-- could possibly do so without realizing how very prickly the thorns she kept about herself often were. But thankfully, Laurie also had more than his fair share of stubborn persistence, and even trying to anticipate the next unexpected curve his new wife might throw at him couldn't squelch his desire to join her in their first night of privacy together, after three years of waiting.
Three years of waiting. Three long, seemingly endless years. Even now, the thought of the time that had passed nearly stole his breath and made him reel at the thought of how much time had passed them since they had first parted and then reunited, due to nothing more than a gamble take on illness and chemistry. And even now-- after all that time had come and passed, after his heart had been wounded, scabbed over, broken and reborn-- Laurie found it hard to believe that so much time had passed between the moment that Jo had whispered her first no and the moment the moment he stood in at present, waiting to be admitted not merely as a lover but as a husband, invited to share whatever she would offer him.
Three years, and so much had changed-- so much he could scarcely believe his own stories as he had wandered through his memories.
[Her hand trembling in the folds of her dress inside the cramped attic, her eyes glistening but her face calm as she had followed him upstairs after he had found her with Fred Vaughn, yielding to subtle courting.]
Three years, after all, in which he had wandered an ancient continent in search of a palliative to his now-wife's presence-- only to find nothing helping. Three years in which he had buried himself in a blur of loose blonds and ripe red-heads-- only to be lost in his own personal memories. Three years in which he had had taken every chance to dismiss the recollection of a woman who had rejected him first-- only to meet failure continually.
[Her voice low and hesitant but unafraid in response to his furious questioning.]
Three full years of trying to deny himself of the echoes of Jo's luminous and painful memory, only to learn it would never be so easy.
["Tedd-- no. No, forgive me for using that old name. Theodore. Mr. Laurence. Please listen! What you saw back there was-- was not what you must have believe it was. You need not be so... so concerned for me."]
Then two years of trying to force himself to forget her in the arms of so many others, only to find her face floating back to him every time he tipped toward ecstasy.
["Fred and I are friends, sir, and he was merely inviting me to Europe as his sister's companion and extending a favor indeed. So you needn't-- needn't feel as though you are protecting my virtue or maidenhood or God alone knows what else I could possibly harbor."]
Then one year of pretending he cared less for her than for her own sister, only to end up nearly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
[The way she kept her voice so low, and her gaze averted from her face. "I don't love him the way you love Amy, sir. And since I am sure he feels little but friendship for me, you needn't trouble yourself with a romance outside your own, whatever... brotherly passions might move you now."]
Then two months of living next door to her again, trying to love her sister and ignore her very presence wherever it hovered, only to pretend that the hurt he sometimes saw flutter across her face meant nothing to him personally.
[The blank mask across her features as she turned away from him, as though all emotions had been erased and replaced by dull sterility. "There are no other grand affairs but yours, sir. Nothing else worth recounting."]
So many years, months, weeks, days and minutes of ignoring his own yearnings, setting aside his true feelings, hardening his heart to the curve of Jo's face and the light in her eyes, making even himself believe that she no longer meant anything--
[His own voice, pained and harsh and low, coming forth to surprise them both. "Then you forget what I feel for you, Jo. It was love at first sight and love at last sight and love at the sight I have before me. Do you truly believe I did what I did because I thought you my sister? Or of myself as your brother? Even I could not be so perverse, despite what you do to me."]
Three years, and and an aching amount of effort, and it was all undone within a quiet, chill, damp attic room, as her great, gray eyes had gazed at him with acceptance at his crude questions about other men, and her mouth had parted like petals against his insistent lips, and all the layers of fire that they had set down between each other had burned down to embers with shocking, terrible ease. Three years and he had needed nothing more than the feel of her hands and her breath to realize that his pretense at loving another had been nothing but a farce and a joke, a tease and a falter, a play enacted for the watching world to serve his own base needs.
[Her face only half-believing, her eyes frightened but yearning. "And what-- what-- God, Teddy, you! What do you still feel for me?"]
Three years, and more than enough women, and her power over him was still as undiminished as ever. Three years, and with the maddening sheen of her lips as she pulled from him, the promise of a dull, respectable, societal redemption at the hands of her golden-haired sister flew away as though it had never been. Three years, and the past knew nothing of the present-- not when there was Jo with her ink-stained fingers and her heart-shaped face, with her luminous eyes and her heart-felt ways, her unknown heart and her unfolding desires, those wild thoughts that had haunted from adolescence and afterward, that always made him feel understood and loved and sane.
["You don't need to ask that question, Jo. You wouldn't be trembling so hard right now if you didn't realize the answer already."]
Three years, and when her fingertips lined up with his after weeks of scorn and recrimination, he could finally understand why his own father had once left behind a fortune for his base Italian mother, fleeing all the world he had known in search of what was divine, beautiful, intangible and real.
["There was never anyone else for me, Jo. There never has been and I doubt there ever will be. And you don't feel any differently, do you, Jo? You still don't feel anything for me?"]
But she had-- she had-- with all of her trembling in his arms high above the rest of the known world, her fingers entwined with his and his lips at her heels. And after he had whispered to her that he could not conceive of a world without her, her cheeks had been dry but trembling when she had told him to go to his sister with an offer, directly her principles like a partition that kept them out of reach.
[She had told him: "I can't betray my sister like this."
And he had looked at her with dark, frantic eyes and whispered: "You are going to be the death of me."]
When he had run after her days later, free of any ties that could keep them apart, she had turned to him in a far wood under a moody sky and told him without words that she would give him another chance to prove that he could court her, that he could love her, that he could be more than his grandfather's heir, or his past's leftovers, or his lack of a soul in need of the faceless, voiceless, gentlemanly redemption that had always been Amy's principle offer.
[She had turned to him in that russet ravine and said: "I have no beauty to offer, sir, and you've shown your temper fierce. How, then, will I know that loving you is the right thing to do?"
And he had looked at her with hope in his eyes at last and whispered: "Then I must prove to you that both you and I are worthy of what we want here."]
He had done that soon enough to the best of his ability. When he chased after Jo in the months after he had broken with Amy, he had done his best to be not just a better man but the best that he could conceive. For her, he had swallowed his pride and made his amends with Fred; for her, he had asked forgiveness from Amy and a way to repent for the ill-made proposal of yesteryear. For Jo, he had sat down to his piano once more and forced himself to remember the impulses he had sought to crush previously, to remember that he had something more to offer from his fingers than inscriptions on business ledgers and letters, than soulless words that meant less than nothing.
For Jo, he had opened himself up to hurt again; for Jo, he had persevered in loving another in spite of all the sieves and dents and cracks and bruises that had formed in him over the last three years. And to his astonishment, she had unfolded in the same way as well, despite the fact that she herself was no more eager to be wounded by unbuckling the emotional armor she kept between herself and the world, echoing his own retreat.
They were, the both of them, often too stubborn for their own good. They could be peas in the pod in terms of nursing old wounds and being completely undone by change, in their prickly refusal to open themselves up to any more pain than they absolutely needed to see. Even before they had met, they had endured enough of absent parents to learn about the cruel face of the world. But three years apart had also taught both a measure of hurt and grace, of how to forgive what needed to be forgiven and how to forget judiciously. They were, the both of them, children no longer, and even their arguments now had a quality of mercy that made them tread more carefully.
Time had taught them tenderness and their own foolishness brought them a measure of humility. And all of this had led him to what he had now: the privilege of waiting outside the room of the woman he loved, content to know that when he entered, he would be included into whatever madcap misadventure she had dreamed up, hands intertwined and voices low with laughter as they schemed and wheedled and made their way into the life together that they had struggled for constantly.
So though the same hypothetical stranger who could have been observing him earlier might have thought him mad for looking forward to whatever experiences the night might garner, Mr. Theodore Laurence found himself eagerly anticipating about whatever lay within his wife's bedroom and sharp mind currently.
After all, if there was one thing that a man could be sure of with Jo, it was that life without her would be neither boring nor easily explicable. Even three years apart from her couldn't erased that lesson from Laurie's mind-- especially after that one beautiful summer evening when she had finally had it with his manifest insecurities and all but grabbed him by his lapels to tell him--
Quite self-consciously, Laurie found himself smiling and fingering the collar of his shirt. After all, whenever he had pictured time together with Jo, he had never imagined that their married life would begin with a bout of possibly criminal activity.
Although if nothing else, it ensured that the day that they had officially been engaged would be one to remember. What man could honestly forget a calm, beautiful, temperate summer day three months into a courting when the woman he had pined after for three straight years locked him in an attic with her, shoved the key in one of the many folds in her skirt, and primly informed him that no one would be leaving until this whole marriage issue was completely resolved between them both, with no more ambiguities?
"I care for you very much, Teddy,” she had started off that fine day, plunging forward into her speech while disregarding his surprised cry as so much tertiary sputtering. “And this is just why I want to arrange our futures once and for all. If I have to live in suspense about whether you’re going to marry me or run off with some other member of my family for even a moment longer, I may well burst into madness and 'accidentally' push you off a cliff and call on Amy, of all people, to help me hide what’s left of the body.”
Needless to say, this had been not the kind of talk that Theodore Laurence, twenty-five years of age and at the height of his considerable charm and grace, had expected to encounter as he had followed a flushed Mademoiselle March up the stairs into the very top of a house that everyone else had left discreetly. He had been more than prepared to converse about bodies but he had assumed that they would still be living ones and there would be no need to speak about their disposal at all, let alone get into the question of how various vengeful relatives might help with the entire deed.
But even as he had sputtered and turn all the various different shades of scarlet in the natural world, his Jo had taken charge of the affair in a way that suggested that she had inherited from her military father both dark hair and a zeal towards accomplishing the near impossible. During the course of what Laurie would later come to realize was very much a planned effort, she managed to devote a single hour to way-laying him in the field of love, smashing away all the rationalizations he always made about putting off the question of marriage for another day, candidly questioning him about what had made his resolve to marry Amy previously crumple and burn away... and finally, very gently, asking him if he still wanted the prize of her hand now that she was his for the offer.
He would always remember the calm, certain look that she had leveled at him as their hour together had wound down and she thought that this would be it, that he would leave her after this, that this was pain she might very well deserve to feel after what she had done to him three years earlier.
He would remember that look for the rest of his life, whenever he faltered again and was on the verge of letting himself fail. He would remember because now that he had her beside him, he could no longer afford to let himself slip to careless cruelty in such a way.
With compassion and tenderness in her eyes, she had held out her hand and unfolded his own within it, as though even his rejection could not make her hate him for the barest second, though he had raged at her for years upon expanding years She could have been his protector and elder as they stood there in that room, she accepting and he still paralyzed by what she thought was happening.
But then, out of the two of them, Jo had always been so much stronger. He should have trusted that were they ever to be in each other's shoes, she would be the only one of the two able to carry on with dignity.
"If you don't love me anymore," she had said, careful to keep her hurt from entering her words, "I understand why and how. I've never been easy to love and if after all this time, you realized that you... you simply loved a facsimile of a fairy tale me instead of the reality... Teddy, I wouldn't fault you any. If you won't speak those words because you feel as though you don't love me in that manner, then all you need to do is say so and we will be merely friends. Merely, but also every after. We can't doing this continually."
And it was then that he realized that though he had railed at Jo a thousand times in his past for being unable to free herself from her childhood, she had turned out to be braver than he in the face of overwhelming change.
Because he had been afraid. Even after these three months-- even after these three years-- he had carried fear beneath his heart like a abscess hidden deep. Underneath the Florentine charm that he wielded like a suit of armor, he was nothing more than a weak-willed coward when it came to earning or losing Jo entirely. Because it was one thing to approach her when he had nothing of her to lose, nothing but chilly words and reproachful memories and meaningless pleasantries. But it was quite another to risk it all with a desperate gambit as long as he had her, or at least enough of her to be happy-- had her hand in his palm and her eyes on his face, had her voices in his ears and her lips soft against his cheek.
It was easy to risk rejection when he had nothing left to lose. But now that he knew what he would have to gamble, he could not bring himself to speak.
He was a coward, an unambiguous coward, and with her, he always had been. But there was no anger in her eyes, none of the rage and desperation he had felt when she had felt once when she had turned away his ring. Instead, there was merely more of that compassion-- and eventually, more of that wisdom, lighting up the gray of her eyes, bringing the color to her cheeks, making her break into that one smile of hers that lit her up from within, like light filtering through summer leaves.
"Oh," she had simply said, when his fingers had tightened and intertwined with hers, when his lips remained mute but had brushed against the stray curls resting against her forehead, shoulder, cheek. He could not speak or whisper or do more than gesture, too afraid that the delicate balance that they had found between him poring out his affections and she tentatively accepting them would be ruptured entirely.
"Oh," she simply repeated again, and then somehow it was enough to turn her radiant face to his, her eyes suddenly filled with secrets and plots and a multitude of plans, as though she knew how to fix what she shouldn't even understand. Simply an oh, rapturous and solemn, and then: "Don't blame yourself, my boy. Given how noses can run faster than I have towards you in the past, I can see why you decided to clam up now. I've caused this problem of ours in the past so I may as well resolve it here."
And when she gracefully went down on one knee to propose, as any proper gentleman would to her lady, he had found himself nearly laughing at the ridiculous, wonderful spectacle she made through his surprised, and surprising, tears.
"Mr. Theodore Laurence," she announced, and her voice was strong and warm and steady, as though her words had been polished and made precious previously. "Let me end the chapter of our beginning without any more flim-flammery. You have largely been a trial and a nuisance since the day I met you, and you've made me cry half a dozen times and break more quills in anger than I wish to keep counting. I realize now that if we marry, we may very well become engulfed in a bitter battle to the death that will cease only when we have expired, presumably from mutual misery. You needle me like no other man, woman or child on earth possibly could and I have my less than completely lovable days as well, which you've already seen. And for all of that, you are also one of the kindest of people I have ever met and the very best friend I will ever have. I can't imagine a life without you by my side, strange and solemn and beautiful and abrupt as that life may prove to be. So if you don't mind a constant struggle by taking me into your life, I would ask you to consent to becoming my bride and making me yours for as long as we keep living."
He tried to speak and then had to try again, still tearing up as she kept her flushed face fixed on his, waiting for an answer tensely. And when he finally spoke, voice broken and low, he could have kicked himself for what he said so... ineptly.
"Bride-groom," he managed to whisper. "You mean... my bride-groom, don't you?"
"Sorry?" she replied blankly, wobbling a little on one knee, her skirt not helping her in her endeavors. She couldn't have looked more surprised if he had whipped a flying fish from his trouser pocket and slapped her with it swiftly.
Clearing his voice he tried again, wondering if this was still a dream. "You should have said: 'will you consent to becoming my bride-groom.' Only women become brides per se, Jo. You can only have one bride at a wedding feast, remember?"
(Well, disregarding the example of Amy.)
Impossibly, she flushed even more as he had gone on with the most ridiculous answer to a much wanted marriage proposal ever, her literary pride apparently stinging. "I... oh, Christopher Columbus, I knew I should have prepared a speech for this meeting more carefully. I was reciting from an old play that I'd written that Professor Bhaer-- but never mind, don't worry about him, it doesn't matter at all. I'm just so embarrassed that I marred this even after days of practicing--"
Laurie hastily interrupted her before she could flagellate herself for the cardinal sin of not reciting her own dialog properly. "Oh, don't worry about it, Jo. It was a very lovely-- and deservingly pointed-- speech that you just gave me. I could not think of one that would suit a poor fool like me with any more ease. It was... was very moving and very touching... and... and very much wanted. And accepted very happily."
She didn't seem to have heard him at first, still distracted by her failure as a writer and actress. "Yes but originally, it was delivered by a man to his childhood sweetheart who had rejected him once and came back to him after her heart had been broken by another. The intent is completely lost if something as silly as the bride-groom and bride comment is bungled up and the emotion simply gets lost when..."
And just as suddenly as she had began, she was taken aback, her eyes traveling from her twitching hands to his hopeful face, overlooking the slight sheen on his cheeks to gaze into his eyes wondering.
"And-- and accepted? Accepted? Teddy, if... if you mean...?"
He might not have be the exact picture of masculine authority and gentlemanly manners then but he did, he did, god yes, he had meant it all with every breath and ebb in his trembling body. And when he curved his unworthy hand about the glorious nimbus of her dark hair and assured him that he meant his shaky word, he asked her what else he could do for her.
He had no ring for her but he had his meager person, and if she had asked him to make it thunder for her, he would have reached his hands into the heavens and found a way to make them sing.
But Jo had simply looked up at him with her shining gray eyes, his brilliant, brave, soon-to-be bride, the woman he would have waited for over and beyond a mere half a decade. "I think, after all this time and pain and ridiculous effort, there is only one thing worth doing. I love you, you sometimes ludicrously lovely fool, and I'd very much like you to shut us both up for a while and kiss me, kiss me, kiss me."
And in another moment, she was on her feet and in his arms and he did and he did and he did and he did, to the best of his ability.
That was Jo in a nutshell. As difficult to predict as a summer storm, but as madly delightful as being caught in a brief rain within the midst of a heat-spell from the bowels of Hades. And though the lady herself would probably raise a dark brow at his mixed metaphors and advise that he leave the fancy language to her, even she would eventually have to agree. She had a strength of mind that belied her thin, plain body, that could have shamed many a man-- including her new husband-- by her sheer stubborn persistence in doing what she believed needed to be done, contrary to their constricted society.
With Jo, there was no need to worry about whether they would or would not accomplish what was expected from them by others, not when she was near. With Jo, the normal conventions of high society seemed to melt away, replaced by the far better sense that he lived neither for his own pleasure or to please others but to discover the world he lived in fully. All the world seemed brighter and more open when he was with her, free from the constraints of his sordid past and tangled family ties, waiting to unfurl and rise and expand itself, pregnant with clean new possibilities.
Another woman might have fashioned him into a more virtuous and respectable man, true. But no one else could have made him happier or could have made him so glad to wake up in a world that could barely contain such a girl. No one else could have made his very senses feel alive from the weight of her gray eyes and the inquisitive warmth of her voice and the clear, sharp courage of her every nerve. With Jo, there would be compromising of integrity and truth merely to please the world's busybodies. And with her, there was no way of fully predicting what their days or nights together would hold, a state of mind that Laurie had yet to find less than extraordinarily thrilling.
All the hypothetical spectators and naysaying naggers of the world could go hang for all he cared currently. He didn't care if others might be shocked at the idea of him spending his wedding night playing pinochle with his bride, if that was as she pleased. If Jo wanted him tonight in both body and soul, he would be glad to live and die for her pleasure completely. And yet, if she chose otherwise, he would be happy to shelve his own desires for the moment and pretend the very hairs on his arms did not prickle in anticipation whenever she stood next to him, that only considerable will had kept him from knowing and adoring every single pore and freckle of her body already. He had waited three years, after all, and he could wait a time longer. No matter how... interesting that wait might turn out to be.
After all, with Jo, it was always best to prepare for the strangest and then hold on for the time of one's life-- knowing all the while that no matter what happened, he would not change any of it in the least.
And when he finally heard her call out his name from the midst of her inner chambers, Mr. Theodore Laurence smiled himself back to a state of apparent calm, smoothed back his dark curls, straightened his slightly creased shirt, and stepped to the doors that would shield them both from the eyes of the outside world during their first true night as married beings.
There were no complete endings possible with Jo, only grand new beginnings. And he meant to make this one as happy as possible, no matter what else might happen tonight or tomorrow or during all the rest of their years.
***
Author's Note: Damn my love for exposition and back-story! If I hadn't felt so compelled to try and sort out what Laurie was feeling as he remembers his past with Jo and then go into the way they officially became engaged (and yes, of course Jo would pop the question if she needed to ;), he'd probably already be in Jo's room man-handling her most intimate metaphors and sentence structures as needed. But instead, their actual interaction will need to wait until chapter 4, which I will hopefully complete in two weeks, before spring break is over. Oh lowly gods of fanfic writing, help me out here!
Of course, if you're still reading this, you can help a great deal by giving me comments, constructive criticism and feedback! I've been blessed to have some remarkably wonderful and critical readers in this fandom and I'd love to get a sense of what you think of this chapter. I wrangled with it for a few weeks and it still seems a bit... off to me, especially in terms of structure. Instead of going with straight exposition, I tried to incorporate flashbacks about Jo and Laurie's two conversations in the March attic, which seems to double as their Sweet Sugar Shack of Extremely Sexy Sin. But although I tried to make Laurie's POV of his recent past hang together well, it came off feeling a bit... stilted to me.
What do you think? Have I gotten a decent sense of Laurie down with this chapter? Or is he a far cry from Louisa May's creation? I don't believe dear Laurie's actually weak-willed or a fool but I'm convinced he might think he is. He has about as healthy a sense of self as does the Hunchback of Notre Dame, which is why Jo is so good for him. She keeps him on track without inflating his status-based ego in the least. ;)
Anyway, thanks for reading, and if I haven't replied back to you yet on chapter 2 (hello, all dear readers on Livejournal!), I'll get back to you by this weekend. Wonderful feedback deserves heart-felt thanks and I would be a boor if I didn't thank you all individually.
Also, as a quick note: I've also written for Black Magik Woman's round-robin Little Women fic Rigmarole. I completed chapter 5 and the fic has enough Jo/Laurie groping and basilisk-like staring from certain rigid, cranky, elderly relative to be a ridiculous amount of fun. Please feel free to check that out if the thought in any way appeals. ;)
Title: A Night To Remember, Chapter 3
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!
***
6.
Mr. Theodore Laurence, twenty-five years of age and at the height of his masculine beauty, could have served as the model of a perfect gentleman as he serenely waited in front of his bedroom doors for a night he had been longing for for the last three years.
Not an inch did he twitch as he stayed in his vigilant pose, waiting for the bride he had just well to call out presently. His face pleasant and his posture ideal, he let his close-cropped curls press against the wallpaper of the hallway as he crossed one long leg over another and settled his elegant pianist hands upon his narrow knees. In the flame-licked glow of the candles surrounding him, his bare face looked almost ethereally detached with the world, as though he were more concerned with trying to figure out how many angels could dance on the head of the pin than whether or not he would ever be let into his wife's bed this evening.
Anyone spying on him at the moment might actually have been surprised by the peace and calm that seemed to be radiating from him-- doubly so if the hypothetical spectator knew that the bride Mr. Laurence was waiting for was one he had mooned over for nearly half a decade, one who had turned down his first proposal, and one whose very presence often made him felt torn between luminous joy and a rather mischievous curiosity about much he could tease her before she erupted magnificently.
Indeed, any hypothetical being who thought him perfectly unruffled by anticipation of what might or might not come about once he stepped through those doors was quite in the wrong. For although Mr. Theodore Laurence, known more casually as Laurie and even tenderly as Teddy, might appear unruffled, he currently felt as though his stomach had been inverted so that it lay rather a ways away from him, possibly also being attacked by a legion of scimitar-wielding villains that his wife (his wife!) would have delighted in creating.
Never-mind his continental poise or his calm mien-- it was currently all that this scion of society could do now not to press his eager ear to the imposing doors separating him from his long-loved and hard-won bride, just to understand what on earth could be keeping her from allowing him to rush in presently.
Of course, he reminded himself, a wry smile settling on his previously unruffled features, it could be any number of things. His new wife could have been stricken by a mysterious case of amnesia that robbed her of any memory of the wedding that had been conducted merely three days ago, leaving her to wander off into the gardens attached to their little house to uncover clues about her mysterious identity. Alternately, she could have been abducted by a band of pirates in retaliation for some rather unflattering written portraits that she had finished the week before, necessitating her rescue by a husband who hoped she would reward him thereafter most dearly. Or-- and with a grin, Laurie had to admit that this was the likeliest the case-- his fair one could have fallen under the spell of yet another story and immediately began scribbling it to herself before she could lose the thread of it and deny the world something brilliant and possibly belligerent, as was her artistic duty.
Allowing his previously held posture of relaxation to slip into true ease for a minute, Laurie sighed in both contentment and exasperation, knowing that he would probably enter their bedroom for their connubial night after a half-hour of worry, only to find his new bride scribbling herself into an authorial frenzy. Instead of throwing themselves at each other with the mad elation he felt more than capable of every time he thought of her in his arms, he might well end up embracing a stack of tightly bound notebook sheets. For all he knew, their first true night as bride and groom might very well end with him helping her with the Latin conjugates of whatever stormy words ancient Christians might have tossed at their Roman lion-wranglers, or some other marvelously mad such thing.
But then, Laurie acknowledged with a slight twitch of his lips, such a possibility was a more than fair price to pay for falling in love with someone as resolutely her own woman as his Josephine insisted on being. No one who loved Mademoiselle March-- now Madame Josephine Laurence!-- could possibly do so without realizing how very prickly the thorns she kept about herself often were. But thankfully, Laurie also had more than his fair share of stubborn persistence, and even trying to anticipate the next unexpected curve his new wife might throw at him couldn't squelch his desire to join her in their first night of privacy together, after three years of waiting.
Three years of waiting. Three long, seemingly endless years. Even now, the thought of the time that had passed nearly stole his breath and made him reel at the thought of how much time had passed them since they had first parted and then reunited, due to nothing more than a gamble take on illness and chemistry. And even now-- after all that time had come and passed, after his heart had been wounded, scabbed over, broken and reborn-- Laurie found it hard to believe that so much time had passed between the moment that Jo had whispered her first no and the moment the moment he stood in at present, waiting to be admitted not merely as a lover but as a husband, invited to share whatever she would offer him.
Three years, and so much had changed-- so much he could scarcely believe his own stories as he had wandered through his memories.
[Her hand trembling in the folds of her dress inside the cramped attic, her eyes glistening but her face calm as she had followed him upstairs after he had found her with Fred Vaughn, yielding to subtle courting.]
Three years, after all, in which he had wandered an ancient continent in search of a palliative to his now-wife's presence-- only to find nothing helping. Three years in which he had buried himself in a blur of loose blonds and ripe red-heads-- only to be lost in his own personal memories. Three years in which he had had taken every chance to dismiss the recollection of a woman who had rejected him first-- only to meet failure continually.
[Her voice low and hesitant but unafraid in response to his furious questioning.]
Three full years of trying to deny himself of the echoes of Jo's luminous and painful memory, only to learn it would never be so easy.
["Tedd-- no. No, forgive me for using that old name. Theodore. Mr. Laurence. Please listen! What you saw back there was-- was not what you must have believe it was. You need not be so... so concerned for me."]
Then two years of trying to force himself to forget her in the arms of so many others, only to find her face floating back to him every time he tipped toward ecstasy.
["Fred and I are friends, sir, and he was merely inviting me to Europe as his sister's companion and extending a favor indeed. So you needn't-- needn't feel as though you are protecting my virtue or maidenhood or God alone knows what else I could possibly harbor."]
Then one year of pretending he cared less for her than for her own sister, only to end up nearly snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
[The way she kept her voice so low, and her gaze averted from her face. "I don't love him the way you love Amy, sir. And since I am sure he feels little but friendship for me, you needn't trouble yourself with a romance outside your own, whatever... brotherly passions might move you now."]
Then two months of living next door to her again, trying to love her sister and ignore her very presence wherever it hovered, only to pretend that the hurt he sometimes saw flutter across her face meant nothing to him personally.
[The blank mask across her features as she turned away from him, as though all emotions had been erased and replaced by dull sterility. "There are no other grand affairs but yours, sir. Nothing else worth recounting."]
So many years, months, weeks, days and minutes of ignoring his own yearnings, setting aside his true feelings, hardening his heart to the curve of Jo's face and the light in her eyes, making even himself believe that she no longer meant anything--
[His own voice, pained and harsh and low, coming forth to surprise them both. "Then you forget what I feel for you, Jo. It was love at first sight and love at last sight and love at the sight I have before me. Do you truly believe I did what I did because I thought you my sister? Or of myself as your brother? Even I could not be so perverse, despite what you do to me."]
Three years, and and an aching amount of effort, and it was all undone within a quiet, chill, damp attic room, as her great, gray eyes had gazed at him with acceptance at his crude questions about other men, and her mouth had parted like petals against his insistent lips, and all the layers of fire that they had set down between each other had burned down to embers with shocking, terrible ease. Three years and he had needed nothing more than the feel of her hands and her breath to realize that his pretense at loving another had been nothing but a farce and a joke, a tease and a falter, a play enacted for the watching world to serve his own base needs.
[Her face only half-believing, her eyes frightened but yearning. "And what-- what-- God, Teddy, you! What do you still feel for me?"]
Three years, and more than enough women, and her power over him was still as undiminished as ever. Three years, and with the maddening sheen of her lips as she pulled from him, the promise of a dull, respectable, societal redemption at the hands of her golden-haired sister flew away as though it had never been. Three years, and the past knew nothing of the present-- not when there was Jo with her ink-stained fingers and her heart-shaped face, with her luminous eyes and her heart-felt ways, her unknown heart and her unfolding desires, those wild thoughts that had haunted from adolescence and afterward, that always made him feel understood and loved and sane.
["You don't need to ask that question, Jo. You wouldn't be trembling so hard right now if you didn't realize the answer already."]
Three years, and when her fingertips lined up with his after weeks of scorn and recrimination, he could finally understand why his own father had once left behind a fortune for his base Italian mother, fleeing all the world he had known in search of what was divine, beautiful, intangible and real.
["There was never anyone else for me, Jo. There never has been and I doubt there ever will be. And you don't feel any differently, do you, Jo? You still don't feel anything for me?"]
But she had-- she had-- with all of her trembling in his arms high above the rest of the known world, her fingers entwined with his and his lips at her heels. And after he had whispered to her that he could not conceive of a world without her, her cheeks had been dry but trembling when she had told him to go to his sister with an offer, directly her principles like a partition that kept them out of reach.
[She had told him: "I can't betray my sister like this."
And he had looked at her with dark, frantic eyes and whispered: "You are going to be the death of me."]
When he had run after her days later, free of any ties that could keep them apart, she had turned to him in a far wood under a moody sky and told him without words that she would give him another chance to prove that he could court her, that he could love her, that he could be more than his grandfather's heir, or his past's leftovers, or his lack of a soul in need of the faceless, voiceless, gentlemanly redemption that had always been Amy's principle offer.
[She had turned to him in that russet ravine and said: "I have no beauty to offer, sir, and you've shown your temper fierce. How, then, will I know that loving you is the right thing to do?"
And he had looked at her with hope in his eyes at last and whispered: "Then I must prove to you that both you and I are worthy of what we want here."]
He had done that soon enough to the best of his ability. When he chased after Jo in the months after he had broken with Amy, he had done his best to be not just a better man but the best that he could conceive. For her, he had swallowed his pride and made his amends with Fred; for her, he had asked forgiveness from Amy and a way to repent for the ill-made proposal of yesteryear. For Jo, he had sat down to his piano once more and forced himself to remember the impulses he had sought to crush previously, to remember that he had something more to offer from his fingers than inscriptions on business ledgers and letters, than soulless words that meant less than nothing.
For Jo, he had opened himself up to hurt again; for Jo, he had persevered in loving another in spite of all the sieves and dents and cracks and bruises that had formed in him over the last three years. And to his astonishment, she had unfolded in the same way as well, despite the fact that she herself was no more eager to be wounded by unbuckling the emotional armor she kept between herself and the world, echoing his own retreat.
They were, the both of them, often too stubborn for their own good. They could be peas in the pod in terms of nursing old wounds and being completely undone by change, in their prickly refusal to open themselves up to any more pain than they absolutely needed to see. Even before they had met, they had endured enough of absent parents to learn about the cruel face of the world. But three years apart had also taught both a measure of hurt and grace, of how to forgive what needed to be forgiven and how to forget judiciously. They were, the both of them, children no longer, and even their arguments now had a quality of mercy that made them tread more carefully.
Time had taught them tenderness and their own foolishness brought them a measure of humility. And all of this had led him to what he had now: the privilege of waiting outside the room of the woman he loved, content to know that when he entered, he would be included into whatever madcap misadventure she had dreamed up, hands intertwined and voices low with laughter as they schemed and wheedled and made their way into the life together that they had struggled for constantly.
So though the same hypothetical stranger who could have been observing him earlier might have thought him mad for looking forward to whatever experiences the night might garner, Mr. Theodore Laurence found himself eagerly anticipating about whatever lay within his wife's bedroom and sharp mind currently.
After all, if there was one thing that a man could be sure of with Jo, it was that life without her would be neither boring nor easily explicable. Even three years apart from her couldn't erased that lesson from Laurie's mind-- especially after that one beautiful summer evening when she had finally had it with his manifest insecurities and all but grabbed him by his lapels to tell him--
Quite self-consciously, Laurie found himself smiling and fingering the collar of his shirt. After all, whenever he had pictured time together with Jo, he had never imagined that their married life would begin with a bout of possibly criminal activity.
Although if nothing else, it ensured that the day that they had officially been engaged would be one to remember. What man could honestly forget a calm, beautiful, temperate summer day three months into a courting when the woman he had pined after for three straight years locked him in an attic with her, shoved the key in one of the many folds in her skirt, and primly informed him that no one would be leaving until this whole marriage issue was completely resolved between them both, with no more ambiguities?
"I care for you very much, Teddy,” she had started off that fine day, plunging forward into her speech while disregarding his surprised cry as so much tertiary sputtering. “And this is just why I want to arrange our futures once and for all. If I have to live in suspense about whether you’re going to marry me or run off with some other member of my family for even a moment longer, I may well burst into madness and 'accidentally' push you off a cliff and call on Amy, of all people, to help me hide what’s left of the body.”
Needless to say, this had been not the kind of talk that Theodore Laurence, twenty-five years of age and at the height of his considerable charm and grace, had expected to encounter as he had followed a flushed Mademoiselle March up the stairs into the very top of a house that everyone else had left discreetly. He had been more than prepared to converse about bodies but he had assumed that they would still be living ones and there would be no need to speak about their disposal at all, let alone get into the question of how various vengeful relatives might help with the entire deed.
But even as he had sputtered and turn all the various different shades of scarlet in the natural world, his Jo had taken charge of the affair in a way that suggested that she had inherited from her military father both dark hair and a zeal towards accomplishing the near impossible. During the course of what Laurie would later come to realize was very much a planned effort, she managed to devote a single hour to way-laying him in the field of love, smashing away all the rationalizations he always made about putting off the question of marriage for another day, candidly questioning him about what had made his resolve to marry Amy previously crumple and burn away... and finally, very gently, asking him if he still wanted the prize of her hand now that she was his for the offer.
He would always remember the calm, certain look that she had leveled at him as their hour together had wound down and she thought that this would be it, that he would leave her after this, that this was pain she might very well deserve to feel after what she had done to him three years earlier.
He would remember that look for the rest of his life, whenever he faltered again and was on the verge of letting himself fail. He would remember because now that he had her beside him, he could no longer afford to let himself slip to careless cruelty in such a way.
With compassion and tenderness in her eyes, she had held out her hand and unfolded his own within it, as though even his rejection could not make her hate him for the barest second, though he had raged at her for years upon expanding years She could have been his protector and elder as they stood there in that room, she accepting and he still paralyzed by what she thought was happening.
But then, out of the two of them, Jo had always been so much stronger. He should have trusted that were they ever to be in each other's shoes, she would be the only one of the two able to carry on with dignity.
"If you don't love me anymore," she had said, careful to keep her hurt from entering her words, "I understand why and how. I've never been easy to love and if after all this time, you realized that you... you simply loved a facsimile of a fairy tale me instead of the reality... Teddy, I wouldn't fault you any. If you won't speak those words because you feel as though you don't love me in that manner, then all you need to do is say so and we will be merely friends. Merely, but also every after. We can't doing this continually."
And it was then that he realized that though he had railed at Jo a thousand times in his past for being unable to free herself from her childhood, she had turned out to be braver than he in the face of overwhelming change.
Because he had been afraid. Even after these three months-- even after these three years-- he had carried fear beneath his heart like a abscess hidden deep. Underneath the Florentine charm that he wielded like a suit of armor, he was nothing more than a weak-willed coward when it came to earning or losing Jo entirely. Because it was one thing to approach her when he had nothing of her to lose, nothing but chilly words and reproachful memories and meaningless pleasantries. But it was quite another to risk it all with a desperate gambit as long as he had her, or at least enough of her to be happy-- had her hand in his palm and her eyes on his face, had her voices in his ears and her lips soft against his cheek.
It was easy to risk rejection when he had nothing left to lose. But now that he knew what he would have to gamble, he could not bring himself to speak.
He was a coward, an unambiguous coward, and with her, he always had been. But there was no anger in her eyes, none of the rage and desperation he had felt when she had felt once when she had turned away his ring. Instead, there was merely more of that compassion-- and eventually, more of that wisdom, lighting up the gray of her eyes, bringing the color to her cheeks, making her break into that one smile of hers that lit her up from within, like light filtering through summer leaves.
"Oh," she had simply said, when his fingers had tightened and intertwined with hers, when his lips remained mute but had brushed against the stray curls resting against her forehead, shoulder, cheek. He could not speak or whisper or do more than gesture, too afraid that the delicate balance that they had found between him poring out his affections and she tentatively accepting them would be ruptured entirely.
"Oh," she simply repeated again, and then somehow it was enough to turn her radiant face to his, her eyes suddenly filled with secrets and plots and a multitude of plans, as though she knew how to fix what she shouldn't even understand. Simply an oh, rapturous and solemn, and then: "Don't blame yourself, my boy. Given how noses can run faster than I have towards you in the past, I can see why you decided to clam up now. I've caused this problem of ours in the past so I may as well resolve it here."
And when she gracefully went down on one knee to propose, as any proper gentleman would to her lady, he had found himself nearly laughing at the ridiculous, wonderful spectacle she made through his surprised, and surprising, tears.
"Mr. Theodore Laurence," she announced, and her voice was strong and warm and steady, as though her words had been polished and made precious previously. "Let me end the chapter of our beginning without any more flim-flammery. You have largely been a trial and a nuisance since the day I met you, and you've made me cry half a dozen times and break more quills in anger than I wish to keep counting. I realize now that if we marry, we may very well become engulfed in a bitter battle to the death that will cease only when we have expired, presumably from mutual misery. You needle me like no other man, woman or child on earth possibly could and I have my less than completely lovable days as well, which you've already seen. And for all of that, you are also one of the kindest of people I have ever met and the very best friend I will ever have. I can't imagine a life without you by my side, strange and solemn and beautiful and abrupt as that life may prove to be. So if you don't mind a constant struggle by taking me into your life, I would ask you to consent to becoming my bride and making me yours for as long as we keep living."
He tried to speak and then had to try again, still tearing up as she kept her flushed face fixed on his, waiting for an answer tensely. And when he finally spoke, voice broken and low, he could have kicked himself for what he said so... ineptly.
"Bride-groom," he managed to whisper. "You mean... my bride-groom, don't you?"
"Sorry?" she replied blankly, wobbling a little on one knee, her skirt not helping her in her endeavors. She couldn't have looked more surprised if he had whipped a flying fish from his trouser pocket and slapped her with it swiftly.
Clearing his voice he tried again, wondering if this was still a dream. "You should have said: 'will you consent to becoming my bride-groom.' Only women become brides per se, Jo. You can only have one bride at a wedding feast, remember?"
(Well, disregarding the example of Amy.)
Impossibly, she flushed even more as he had gone on with the most ridiculous answer to a much wanted marriage proposal ever, her literary pride apparently stinging. "I... oh, Christopher Columbus, I knew I should have prepared a speech for this meeting more carefully. I was reciting from an old play that I'd written that Professor Bhaer-- but never mind, don't worry about him, it doesn't matter at all. I'm just so embarrassed that I marred this even after days of practicing--"
Laurie hastily interrupted her before she could flagellate herself for the cardinal sin of not reciting her own dialog properly. "Oh, don't worry about it, Jo. It was a very lovely-- and deservingly pointed-- speech that you just gave me. I could not think of one that would suit a poor fool like me with any more ease. It was... was very moving and very touching... and... and very much wanted. And accepted very happily."
She didn't seem to have heard him at first, still distracted by her failure as a writer and actress. "Yes but originally, it was delivered by a man to his childhood sweetheart who had rejected him once and came back to him after her heart had been broken by another. The intent is completely lost if something as silly as the bride-groom and bride comment is bungled up and the emotion simply gets lost when..."
And just as suddenly as she had began, she was taken aback, her eyes traveling from her twitching hands to his hopeful face, overlooking the slight sheen on his cheeks to gaze into his eyes wondering.
"And-- and accepted? Accepted? Teddy, if... if you mean...?"
He might not have be the exact picture of masculine authority and gentlemanly manners then but he did, he did, god yes, he had meant it all with every breath and ebb in his trembling body. And when he curved his unworthy hand about the glorious nimbus of her dark hair and assured him that he meant his shaky word, he asked her what else he could do for her.
He had no ring for her but he had his meager person, and if she had asked him to make it thunder for her, he would have reached his hands into the heavens and found a way to make them sing.
But Jo had simply looked up at him with her shining gray eyes, his brilliant, brave, soon-to-be bride, the woman he would have waited for over and beyond a mere half a decade. "I think, after all this time and pain and ridiculous effort, there is only one thing worth doing. I love you, you sometimes ludicrously lovely fool, and I'd very much like you to shut us both up for a while and kiss me, kiss me, kiss me."
And in another moment, she was on her feet and in his arms and he did and he did and he did and he did, to the best of his ability.
That was Jo in a nutshell. As difficult to predict as a summer storm, but as madly delightful as being caught in a brief rain within the midst of a heat-spell from the bowels of Hades. And though the lady herself would probably raise a dark brow at his mixed metaphors and advise that he leave the fancy language to her, even she would eventually have to agree. She had a strength of mind that belied her thin, plain body, that could have shamed many a man-- including her new husband-- by her sheer stubborn persistence in doing what she believed needed to be done, contrary to their constricted society.
With Jo, there was no need to worry about whether they would or would not accomplish what was expected from them by others, not when she was near. With Jo, the normal conventions of high society seemed to melt away, replaced by the far better sense that he lived neither for his own pleasure or to please others but to discover the world he lived in fully. All the world seemed brighter and more open when he was with her, free from the constraints of his sordid past and tangled family ties, waiting to unfurl and rise and expand itself, pregnant with clean new possibilities.
Another woman might have fashioned him into a more virtuous and respectable man, true. But no one else could have made him happier or could have made him so glad to wake up in a world that could barely contain such a girl. No one else could have made his very senses feel alive from the weight of her gray eyes and the inquisitive warmth of her voice and the clear, sharp courage of her every nerve. With Jo, there would be compromising of integrity and truth merely to please the world's busybodies. And with her, there was no way of fully predicting what their days or nights together would hold, a state of mind that Laurie had yet to find less than extraordinarily thrilling.
All the hypothetical spectators and naysaying naggers of the world could go hang for all he cared currently. He didn't care if others might be shocked at the idea of him spending his wedding night playing pinochle with his bride, if that was as she pleased. If Jo wanted him tonight in both body and soul, he would be glad to live and die for her pleasure completely. And yet, if she chose otherwise, he would be happy to shelve his own desires for the moment and pretend the very hairs on his arms did not prickle in anticipation whenever she stood next to him, that only considerable will had kept him from knowing and adoring every single pore and freckle of her body already. He had waited three years, after all, and he could wait a time longer. No matter how... interesting that wait might turn out to be.
After all, with Jo, it was always best to prepare for the strangest and then hold on for the time of one's life-- knowing all the while that no matter what happened, he would not change any of it in the least.
And when he finally heard her call out his name from the midst of her inner chambers, Mr. Theodore Laurence smiled himself back to a state of apparent calm, smoothed back his dark curls, straightened his slightly creased shirt, and stepped to the doors that would shield them both from the eyes of the outside world during their first true night as married beings.
There were no complete endings possible with Jo, only grand new beginnings. And he meant to make this one as happy as possible, no matter what else might happen tonight or tomorrow or during all the rest of their years.
***
Author's Note: Damn my love for exposition and back-story! If I hadn't felt so compelled to try and sort out what Laurie was feeling as he remembers his past with Jo and then go into the way they officially became engaged (and yes, of course Jo would pop the question if she needed to ;), he'd probably already be in Jo's room man-handling her most intimate metaphors and sentence structures as needed. But instead, their actual interaction will need to wait until chapter 4, which I will hopefully complete in two weeks, before spring break is over. Oh lowly gods of fanfic writing, help me out here!
Of course, if you're still reading this, you can help a great deal by giving me comments, constructive criticism and feedback! I've been blessed to have some remarkably wonderful and critical readers in this fandom and I'd love to get a sense of what you think of this chapter. I wrangled with it for a few weeks and it still seems a bit... off to me, especially in terms of structure. Instead of going with straight exposition, I tried to incorporate flashbacks about Jo and Laurie's two conversations in the March attic, which seems to double as their Sweet Sugar Shack of Extremely Sexy Sin. But although I tried to make Laurie's POV of his recent past hang together well, it came off feeling a bit... stilted to me.
What do you think? Have I gotten a decent sense of Laurie down with this chapter? Or is he a far cry from Louisa May's creation? I don't believe dear Laurie's actually weak-willed or a fool but I'm convinced he might think he is. He has about as healthy a sense of self as does the Hunchback of Notre Dame, which is why Jo is so good for him. She keeps him on track without inflating his status-based ego in the least. ;)
Anyway, thanks for reading, and if I haven't replied back to you yet on chapter 2 (hello, all dear readers on Livejournal!), I'll get back to you by this weekend. Wonderful feedback deserves heart-felt thanks and I would be a boor if I didn't thank you all individually.