Abolition
A/N: I do not own anything recognisable – it's all Louisa May Alcott's.
Warning for sexual content and adult themes. I'm not leaving anything central to the relationship in this 'verse out. Also, though I don't want to ruin the plot anyone who has a problem reading about sex, adultery, euthanasia, abortion or suicide should probably steer clear of this one – I'm not saying they're going to be in here but it's a precaution so you don't get mad later. Sorry! This is definitely an adult fic kiddies.
Takes up after 'middles' and from moments between 'lovers' in One Hundred. Sorry some of it will be rehashed but you guys seemed to give positive responses to these two chapters and it's hell fun to write.
…
They will not be missed, he convinces himself, holding Jo's hand as they skirt towards the edge of the room, ignorant to the smiling faces around them. Her face is very serious but he believes well enough that he can read her like he can see the back of his hand. He gives one last look to the room filled with dancing couples and minglers and the last very best bash his grandfather will hold. They will not be missed.
Laurie steps into the hall and Jo is not far behind. He looks for interlopers and finding none turns to her, his eyes slipping easily to the unprecedented view her new dress affords him. He has never seen so much uncovered flesh on Jo in decent society and it has reduced him to a silence he hasn't held since the day in the field.
She must know what she does to him, Laurie decides as he watches her evade his gaze, hands behind her back. Jo must know for she chose to wear such a dress. He moves to stand over her, infinitely pleased to hear her take a breath at his proximity. His hands brush the oddly shaped bodice fit of the dress and just for a second her eyes close and he knows she is his for the night. She hasn't spoken five words to him since that day in the field but it is in the way she leaves her neck bare, invites him with lowered lashes in a practice she has never performed.
It is then he realises she is not coy or shy but worried. Her eyes are scanning the curtain and her breath is shallow as she watches and waits. If she wants to be interrupted, wants a stop to this she need only speak – she knows how to undo him in the worst and best of ways. Laurie lifts a hand to her cheek and there! she turns her face into his palm. Her hand grips his tight to her cheek and she presses the fiercest of brief kisses to it that it only takes a moment more before he swoops down and captures her lips, the feeling sweet if a little desperate behind the curtain of an unwitting audience.
When they pull apart he knows he cannot disguise the hunger in his eyes. He has been waiting too long. Laurie steps toward her and she steps back, heading to the support of the wall he knows he will press her against. Her skirt feels like the sheets he shares with Amy and Laurie quickly finds himself putting that comparison out of his head by kissing Jo again, her cheek, her lips when she pulls his head down properly and captures him in her narrow hands.
He feels like every villain in every book Jo ever recommended and he can't say a part of him isn't thrilled by it. Laurie's heart is racing and his blood is simmering at the sight and feel of this strange and ridiculous dress that has turned Jo into something he never knew and yet recognises all the same. He wants her, has the moment he saw her enter from the foyer, the moment he woke that morning, the moment she left him in that god-awful, god-sent field he won't stop dreaming about.
Why did she pick this dress if not to encourage him? His lips lift from hers and in his thoughts he is unsure. Does she want him? Or is she simply submitting because he won't have it any other way? Did it matter?
"Why –" he begins but Jo shakes her head and he finds the question swallowed in a seemingly endless pile of things-they-will-never-say and so he puts it aside and directs his attention to the pertinence of her breasts. They are pressed high and puffed full with each shaky breath Jo takes and he frankly thinks this is the best part of such a gown. Her hand sneaks into his hair and he feels totally surrendered to her as the blunt edges of her nails scrape the sensitive skin of his nape. He feels as though there is not enough air and sympathises when it is obvious Jo can barely breathe for all the tightness of her dress.
That, he thinks, can be helped. Laurie bends, lifting a hand under the weight of her dress heading for the waistband of her underclothes – he doubts many might be under such heavy material, but women's clothing has often mystified him as the people wearing it. He wants to touch more bare skin, the softness he knows to be there, under all those layers but her net is stubbornly in the way and he frowns, unable to reach through. An attempt to unhook – hooks thank the Lord, no belt - the pesky thing fails resulting in Jo's twisted mouth and a shove he thinks is a little out-of-order.
Frowning at her he watches as she moves off the wall heading to where he has no idea. She holds out her hand and he takes it without a thought and soon she is leading them down the corridor, through the foyer and to a side room he'd forgotten about. Laurie steps through the door, looking about the narrow library as he hears Jo close the door behind them. The lock clicks shut and the tiny noise fills the long room. He turns to find her leaning against the door, the angular strips of light falling across her dress from the window at the opposite end. The moon was brighter than he realised, he thought approaching her as though they had all the time in the world. It was never enough. Never would be.
"The library?" he asks quietly, hoping she will take his hands soon and he can feel like there is only them and nothing outside this old, old room.
An old look crosses her face which ironically makes her seem so very young. Jo pushes off the door and his heart is beating a little faster as she nears. "Really," she chastises and he almost imagines them seventeen, without husbands and wives and eyes only for college and the future. "Didn't know your memory had gotten so terrible, Teddy." His heart has caught up with her calling him 'Teddy' and he closes the short distance between the two of them.
He takes her hands from where they rest habitually behind her back and smiles, feeling a little goofy when his forehead knocks against hers, needing to be closer yet. "You don't know what it does to me to hear you call me that, Jo."
A small smile of her own almost spreads before she uses those lips to kiss him into silence and he submits with great enthusiasm. He feels as if he owes the world to those lips, even if they were the very same that sent him away, sent them apart, they brought them back together again and right at that very moment he wanted nothing more than what they offered.
Jo however, had other plans and the feel of her thumbs as they hooked around his belt made him grin like a lunatic against her mouth. This is only the second time, he reminds himself, don't be hasty. But she has stepped into him and her hands have untucked the tails of his shirt and she feels so impossibly warm for someone dressed so… so…
Laurie's mind was politely excused and he tears his lips from hers to kiss her neck, sucking softly at the skin not long enough to leave a mark before his hands find all the catches they can. The top-half of Jo's dress is soon loose and within two moments more she has divested him of jacket, waistcoat and shirt before turning her attention to the hassle of the crinoline. He briefly watches in bafflement, running a hand through the back of his hair in thought before wisely thinking of his trousers and dropping them in time to find Jo almost-naked and waiting.
Her hands are on her arms and she looks more nervous than the time she'd told him about the crystal vase she broke. Laurie steps swiftly to her and kisses her as reassuringly as he knows how. Jo groans appreciatively and when her hands run down his back he can not help the shiver that follows in their wake.
Hurriedly he lifts her and in two steps she is pressed into the bookcase, sighing into his mouth as he feels unashamedly hard at the sounds she is making. Jo's hands are gripping him tight and she moves her hips in the slowest of twists he actually grunts.
"Quickly," she gasps when he kisses her chin, her jaw, one hand supporting them against the bookcase in this precarious position, the other boldly fondling a breast that has spilled over the short corset Jo is stuck wearing. He nods in answer and knocks her legs firmly apart with one of his own, feeling as ready as they need to be fast. She runs one hand down his throat, down fast, the skimming feeling of her nail sending his hairs on-end with delight before she fists him in two sharp tugs. Laurie's eyes almost roll back into his head and he accidentally pinches her breast harder than he intended before moving that same hand to Jo's folds.
Jo's eyes flutter shut and he wordlessly marvels at the expression of pleasure on her face as his fingers dance intimately in and out, tugging one way then the next. He swirls as delicately as possible in their place before she is moaning, head lolling backwards onto books that have not been read in years. He pulls out of her, thumb swiping her nipple absently before he suckles on the same spot with vigour, wanting to know just what she tastes like. Jo bucks, her hand pulling him tight at once and he finds it hard to continue, suddenly unable to breathe.
He wishes they did not have to be as quick as they must but he straightens and with great strength, holds Jo up as he pushes and she squirms onto him, pulling his hair as her hand falls on her breast and he hastens their tempo. It is fast and not a little angry and Jo is gasping and he is pistoning and it isn't enough that she wouldn't speak to him and he wants her every waking, every dreaming moment of his life and he can't get enough and he wants he wants he –
Laurie finds it over in a blinding flash and he feels better than he has in weeks and Jo is still atop. He slides his hand to the front of their join without hesitation and she twitches and he smooths and her arms are so tight around his neck before her whole body is jelly and they are sliding down from the bookshelf, wrapped in each other as deadweight.
"I forgot how that feels," she whispers to him. They have silently agreed to give each other a moment before they dress and rejoin the party.
"You've had sex on bookcases and you haven't told me?" he asks, unable and unwanting to hide his smirk. Jo punches him tiredly in the arm and feels that what they have just done must have been for their seventeen-year-old-selves.
"You know what I mean."
"Better than anyone else," Laurie mumbles into her hair, her beautiful hair which has become mussed and largely unfixable. Stories will have to be invented for this time, he thinks, slightly pleased and terrified at the connotations of that.
Jo is the first to get up, wiping a thumb under her eyes when she thinks he isn't looking. She finds her clothes and the skin between her thighs is thick. It takes only a minute more for him, kneeling before her, to kiss the slick away, making sure she knows the taste of them on his tongue before they leave the room to find their families and dance with lemonade.
…
It is night and it is dark and dark is good for thoughts such as those which Laurie entertained of late. He has grown use to the lack of light, he has known sorrow and he has known what it has felt like to be a boy and now to stand as a man.
Anything he feels he has achieved since that horrible day in the grove so many years ago feels shallow and cold and Laurie stands at his window, looking up the road to where he knows it is a good walk to Plumfield and where Jo is sleeping in another man's bed. He tries not to think of Amy, whose soft breathing is like the sound of crickets in summer, just the background noise to his life. His life, he thinks is falling apart.
There is nothing he can do to stop it. There is nothing he wants to do to stop it.
He will be with Jo.
…
He is thinking about how many layers of petticoats she is wearing today when she smiles at him and hugs Amy. Laurie flatters himself he does not let his thoughts show at the best of times and when it is their turn to embrace he does it as any brother should. Any brother who is anything but and thinking of nothing more than licking the underside of her throat, wondering if sweat would pool in the dip of her stomach if he tried her long enough with his hands. With his mouth. He is cool and collected and chats about cricket with practiced ease as the professor enlists his help with the day's equipment.
He smiles congenially and is sure to keep Jo in his sights as they stride across the grassy field with children running as wild as they can. He is wondering if she would like to lie on her belly in this grass and let him kiss her back or lower –
"Teddy!" Jo calls out and he smiles inwardly at her innate ability to reign in his immorality at the best of times. "Over here! The table should go here," she directs him and he smiles for her when he has put the bulky item down on the grass. She smiles back but it is tightly reigned in as soon as she feels the presence of the others.
Surely, he thinks, a smile is harmless. But Jo is setting out the plates of food and unstacking the glasses and he is determined to be her shadow for the day if she will do nothing but watch their audience. Laurie's fingers brush hers over the potato salad and she hastily pulls back looking quickly for Amy who is obliviously lying out a rug for her and Marmee to sit. Laurie frowns at her when she looks back, red down her neck into the very high collar she is wearing. Dull grey he notes blandly when her look sharpens into a glare.
Laurie busies himself with the glasses as she clutches the pitcher looking for a fight. He knows what she wants to say and he will not have it.
…
It's somewhere between dusk and dawn that his hands fall upon her hips and they continue what dreams present when he closes his eyes at night, another's small white hand resting on his chest. He steps in close enough to feel Jo's breath fall against his neck and he thinks it smells of honey and milk and bread and he knows home before he feels it. She lets him kiss her, and that in itself should be enough but they both know it never is.
Laurie pushes her back, till she is against one of the kitchen chairs and the very real danger of the housemaid she keeps in this enormity of a house catching them at it makes his kiss only stronger, his hands hungry and wild as she bends to better reach him. Jo's thumbs hook around the edge of his collar and he feels with startling reality the scrape of her thumbnails as she tugs him down, the difference in height filling in lines of frustration across her brow. He loves her for it, knows that with all his being, he would love her for everything. It is a frightening, damning thought.
"Bedroom," he whispers when they break apart for breath. Jo nods quickly, though she will not meet his eyes as she takes his hand and they climb the grand staircase without sound. She holds open the door to a room he has not visited but recognises as a study. Jo closes the door before he can ask anything and her hands are on his throat, down his waistcoat and in his pockets and he thinks nothing of this change in plans. Laurie steps into her, kisses the spot above her right eye and wraps his arms around her for they have always belonged there.
Jo is not content to be simply held however and Laurie soon finds the routine of stripping each other as enjoyable as every other unbidden, hopeless time. He wonders quietly why he did not see this earlier, that she would submit to this spiralling immorality but he will not question it in the genuine fear that all of this might disappear as quickly and unexpected as it had begun. Unexpected yes, but, he thought, watching Jo pop the last button in her blouse, the soft cotton slipping off her long thin arms to the ground, not nearly unwanted. It wasn't as if he hadn't thought of it, not when his wife pressed her small mouth to his, not when she smiled under the scattered light of her parasol, and certainly not when she'd rolled over and watched him in afterglow. Jo, he thinks is so fundamentally different, and so originally his.
She smiles one of those long, wicked smiles that he has only ever seen when stealing cooling pies and in the more daring moments of sex and he can't help but grin back. Her foot rises to press against his thigh as an open invitation as she reaches for the clasps behind her back. Laurie's brow rises, knowing written all over his face before his hands snake up the length of her leg, brushing against the tender spots before he reaches the flush of her hip and she is almost laughing. A life of responsibility, sensibleness and living up to expectations set long ago upon him did not, he decides, prepare him for this. And, he thinks, laughing when she loops her arms about his neck and arches a very impatient brow as her lips give her away, he is okay with that.
"Well?" Jo asks and it is all he can do not to drag them to the floor. Instead Laurie's fingers dance under the lighter layers of her skirt. She has only worn two petticoats today and his fingers itch to see how much quicker it is to divest her of summer clothes. All in good time, he tells himself, stalling Jo's put-on agitation with a kiss to her temple as he leads them closer to the conspicuous couch. His fingers slip under the band to her undercoats and he pulls them down, falling to his knees under the unsubtle approach. She grins at him, hands on his shoulders as she steps out of the pile of underthings at her feet. His hands skim back up her legs, her hips to dance under the belt of her skirt. It is as high as fashion dictates for the modest woman and he is a little surprised by the complexity of fastenings on the outside of the material. With Jo, simplicity is rarely a familiar adjective but he knows her taste in clothes and the skirt, just for a half of a second reminds him of his wife and he stares as his hands hesitate to slip out and remove the garment.
He thinks Jo has noticed though neither says anything and he helps her unhook the form-fitting part of the skirt. When her hands move back to his hair he tugs the heavy material down, over her slim hips to pool at her feet. The troublesome article is forgotten as she leans forward to capture his lips and his eyes fall shut, trying hard to memorise this kiss along with his slowly expanding collection. He wants to never forget a moment he shares with her in the privacy of this affair for every moment spins them closer to its end; he knows it though his heart beats in the heat of it. He knows it though he will deny it to her every time she asks, and ask Jo will for she is nothing but pragmatic and would rather be lied to than live for the finish. He knows it because he knows her.
Laurie undresses without tease or method but with a silly grin across his lips as Jo attempts to keep touching him whenever he pauses to reach for his next piece of clothing. He considers how unfair it is that so much time, their time, should be spent in the hassle of dressing and navigating fashion codes for layers and buttons and collars are all well and good until haste comes into play. Finally free of his shirt his arms reach for Jo and he finds her sitting already on the sofa, a look somewhere between peace and the waver of a sinner flashing across her face. He quickly kisses her, running hands warmed with movement and the day down her back to the dip above her bottom. She tilts her head to accommodate him and soon they are lying akimbo to the scratchy velvet that smooths opposite to their limbs.
His body is too big for the ordinary sofa and he find himself hanging awkwardly over Jo as she adjusts to their position, fitting her arms around his torso though his legs bend uncomfortably. She lifts her head from the base cushion and kisses him, her thin lips hot like soft wax and discomfort is soon replaced with pleasure as she pulls her legs under her and they are kneeling, Jo on her haunches as her hands cup his jaw and his her hips. Soon she is leaning over him and he lets her crawl onto his very naked lap, heart swelling at the leap of initiative, Jo's hands going to the arm of the chair behind him, gripping tight as they kiss without restraint.
Jo's eyes are closed as are Laurie's though he would know her from every other woman even if blindness took him. His hands are now familiar with every inch of her long planes, softened with the womanhood he had missed changing, desperate and hanging as he was a sea over and drowning his broken heart. He should have waited; he thinks now, his hands on her breasts as her knees hook around him. He should have waited and they would not have to swallow these lies.
A hand slides smoothly along his spine to the spot between his shoulder blades and he knows this is his cue. His lips break from Jo's to travel down her jaw, across her throat to suck above her breast before they duck lower and he tastes what boyish fantasies had made nothing like the real thing. Her nipple is tight in his mouth and he enjoys the deep, throaty moan he coaxes, the hand fisted in his hair. His fingers find the other pointed rise on her left breast and he wishes he always knew what this felt like – that if he should twist it lightly to the study door she would clinch him tight and whisper his name so huskily that he felt blood rise.
She shifts a little against him and they both realise just how quickly this might all be over. Jo's short nails find the back of his neck and he wonders how she can be so careful when her hips are squeezing him like that. He bites a little and she lowers herself and Laurie is all momentary sensation, that point that throbs just for Jo burning at the contact as his own hips move forward of their own accord.
"Mmm," she mumbles, hands running their way down his back to creep forward over his stomach. His breath is lost at the feeling of her fingers across his stomach and he pulls away from her chest to stop his head from spinning but only succeeds so that his head is resting in the crook of her shoulder. Jo's hands are travelling lower and he prays that he has strength for this – then she takes him in hand, soft at first before she is as merciless as she is at play-directing, her whole hand wrapped tightly in short powerful strokes that are his whole world of feeling. He chokes into the tendrils of hair that have long-slipped-out of her net and it is then that he realises where her other hand has gone.
"Jo," he manages, slipping a finger along with hers into her fire-heat enjoying the effect her immediate gasp has on the hand that still has his flesh encompassed. She is powerful like this and he never doubted she would learn how to deliberate her sexuality as she had every other aspect of her life. Amy was commanding and controlling – in good-natured spirits though it was meant and taken but Jo, Jo was strong-willed, wild and her own person and he never wanted it any other way. She could point a finger and he would know what she meant. And a finger she did point, he smiles against her neck, moving his hand in slow tandem with her own as she stretches and attunes.
Finally she releases him and Laurie supposes from the shaking of her hand as it moves to grip his shoulder when he kisses her that she is near and ready. He shuffles closer, legs slipping under her as her hips position themselves around his own and he presses one hand to her breasts, the other teasing her wet folds. Laurie feels as though everything is singing to him, each prickling spike of heat that shoots straight out to that point that aches is screaming that this is right, is what he had waited for the moment he met her, half his life ago.
"God Jo," he keeps his voice low, just as her hips slide down to meet his in the delicious first-touch, his hand still skirting between them. "I've known you half my life," he says, repeating his thoughts for her. "And now…"
She rocks against him, pulling herself up and quickly back down as he meets her, each achingly deliberate thrust after the other. "And now?" Jo's voice is pitched as low as his although the fog in her eyes and its airy distraction does not fool him.
"Now I know you."
Jo leans forward to kiss him, continuing each motion as blood pounds through his ears and movement become messy and faster - his body feeling like a tightly-wound spring. He watches as Jo's eyes fall shut and her head tilts to the side as it always has, the tension in her face unbearably mirrored in his own as his hands clamp down on her hips and his thrusts are shorter and sharper and her shoulders are loose and her lip is between her teeth and he can't take it anymore and his finger flick at her one last time and she is falling onto him and he can't –
Laurie spills up into her feeling as though everything is burning and fire and white and hot until he is breathing again and his legs lay as flat as the sofa allows. Jo's face is pressed against his neck. Her hand keeps her there and he is happy.
Dressing and reality and marriage will come soon enough, but he is holding Jo and she isn't crying.