A/N: originally this was going to be a series with Piano, but turns out I wrote in a different tense and it ended up having no sex… so here is a new series I guess. Oneshots with props for plots. I read last night that the piano was essentially the tv in sociological terms in the 19th c.

L.M.A. owns Jo and Laurie. Too bad she didn't own 'em married-style.

Jo tapped the thin end of her pen absentmindedly against her teeth as she dazed. She was looking out the window as the rain fell against the window idly, the cold dancing across the rose bushes beneath the sill. Her mind stretched far beyond the physical as she dreamt up circumstances she could never experience for people she would never meet.

She was writing and it wasn't going very well. Nothing she could think of seemed substantial enough to commit to paper and Jo blew the hair out of her face in frustration. Her eyes flicked over to her husband who sat playing a series of notes before scribbling furiously at the manuscript spread across the top of his piano. He played the sequence again and she watched as he closed his eyes, losing himself in the passage he'd just constructed.

If only things were going so well for her, Jo thought enviously.

"You know, I can feel you staring at me." Laurie spoke without opening his eyes, his shoulders still hunched over the keys.

Jo laughed and threw her pen to the table.

"Once upon a time this would have been a very different scene," he shuffled his papers together, sparing a glance in her direction. "I would have done all the staring and you all the work."

The rain left glittering streaks down the pane and Jo smiled to see her husband haloed by the glare of the morning. He was always so blissfully unaware of the turns of the weather and it amused her to no end to see him launch off on a walk only to come back completely drenched and completely surprised.

"What's so funny, please?"

"Nothing," Jo said patiently, swinging her legs from their precarious position on the table-top edge. Laurie raised his eyebrows curiously, still looking through his paper as he stood. "Did you even comb your hair this morning?" she asked for lack of anything interesting to say.

"Yes mother, twice if you'd like to know." Laurie put on a suffered look, tucking his neat pile of paper under his arm as he moved across the room towards her.

"Could've fooled me," she smiled as he bent to kiss her.

"I did – how goes the story?"

Jo frowned, huffing as he wormed himself into her chair and managed to pull her onto his lap all at once. "Terribly. Teddy I don't know what's wrong but lately everything in my head is all so scattered. Anything worthwhile flies off and in its place is something horribly mundane."

"Maybe an adventure is called for?"

She cracked a wry smile at that, looking at Laurie from the corner of her eye. "Oh, I know just the kind of adventure you're fishing for, sir."

Laurie pasted on a look of absolute innocence though his hand moved from her waist to her thigh. "I don't know what you're insinuating, sir." Jo laughed despite herself when he pushed his paper beside hers to kiss her neck. She squirmed at the ticklish feeling before he pushed her hair back and smiled into her skin, content to hold her close as she returned to her literary frustrations.

"Surely you've had writer's block before?"

"I'm no stranger to it. I suppose it is something I must simply push through."

"It shouldn't be a chore, Jo! Where's the fun in doing what you love if you come to hate it?"

Jo gave him a long hard look, using the hand that had gone around his shoulders to pull at his collar. "Are you telling me I imagined that embarrassing scene just last week of blows and kicks to that very grand instrument sitting just over there?"

"I'd rather that be remembered as manful discontent, but I take your point."

"Well 'manful discontent' or no, it's all very discouraging."

"We have an attic, I think…" Laurie suggested and Jo was surprised to realise she hadn't truly made a place just for her writing since they'd moved. It wasn't as though she'd had no time but she supposed, it was more that she liked having company in this house that seemed so very big for just two people at present.

"How would I hear you play all the way up there?"

Laurie looked surprised. "… How did you manage with Beth downstairs?"

Jo was silent for a moment, looking to the table to push her pen around. "Actually, I don't think… that is, I don't suppose it was ever an issue."

"You like my playing." He meant it as a question but the sheer delight that broke across his features inhibited Laurie from directing it as such. Jo ducked her head as he grinned, infinitely pleased by the idea. "My wife likes my playing," he announced to the empty room.

"I feel like some horrible secret has gotten out and now your head will be bigger than the continent." Jo said, fiddling with the inkwell feeling more embarrassed than she should.

"Why should it be such a bad thing for you to prefer you husband's playing more than anyone else's?"

"I never said such a thing!" Jo dropped the well and looked at him incredulously as he continued to beam proudly. "Honestly, you are such a crowing rooster," she chastised, pulling his ear as he laughed. "I only prefer your Chopin, and your own work."

"That's fair; Beth was unbeatably good at everything else. I remember the first time I heard her play Beethoven…" Laurie fell uncharacteristically quiet and Jo felt him grip her just a little tighter as she played with his collar again. "Well," he cleared his throat. "I shouldn't want you to think I've banished you to the other end of the house."

"Oh it might not be so bad, Teddy. Think what the servants will say of your wife who lives in the attic like some twisted, gnarled ghoul who feasts only at midnight and never tends to her appearance. I'm sure there's a story in that somewhere."

Laurie chuckled at the look on her face as she quickly lost herself to the idea. "Gotten over your block?"

"Actually…" Jo leaned across the table and picked up her pen, dipping it into the well before she began to write.

"Well, I'm glad I could help Little Ghoul." He kissed her cheek and pulled himself out from under her, taking up his papers again.

"I will hate it all tomorrow." She said though she never paused between dipping and scratching along with her pen.

"What will your husband do?"

"He will lace her bread and wine with blood – ah, but the catch – does he feed her, or make her?"

Laurie shook his head fondly, knowing he'd lost his wife for the afternoon.