A/N: Nothing as epic as Mariagoner's 'Tempo and Rhythm' but I wanted to try my hand at piano sex. Something that just seems so natural to any relationship with Laurie. Totally inspired by Mariagoner, just so we're clear.
L.M.A. owns the characters. I hardly think she would own up to owning what they do here though.
…
Something inside her changes when it rains. Her skin crawls and something itches, a scratch she can't scratch and she's not quite sure when it all began. Jo lifts her head from her hand, turning away from the window, the incessant rain providing no answers. She can hear Laurie 'banging away' at his piano in the room across the hall and smiles, the itch leaping just a bit inside her.
He's been all frowns as of late, taking trips to Boston and working late hours in his study, holed up for the long run. She doesn't envy him and tries to find patience when he scowls at her meals or snaps at her when she teases. It's hard though for it isn't in her nature to simply take what is given, or thrown, at her. Still, they are learning together what sacrifices mean and what it is to be constantly in each others company. Sometimes she longs for the days when she could bid him goodbye and hide in her room knowing he would safely stay outside Orchard House for a good few days. She knew how to hurt him better back then. Jo shakes her head at herself, wondering what possessed her to be so flighty when her temper took hold. She was trying, so much harder than ever these days to master her reactionary anger but it hadn't helped Laurie had been so stressed.
It only really worked when they were both trying.
Jo sighs and pulls herself out of the comfort of her chair, her absent needlework falling to the ground. Ordinarily she might have picked it up, packed up her box and tidied the corner before leaving it but Jo is in a mind today and the itch tells her to move.
She smiles at the high notes in the song he has chosen to warm up with. Liszt, she recognises still smiling as she enters the hallway and passes the front door. She has not lived with him so long without knowing composers and habitual favourites. His fingers quicken and she thinks it sounds like rain, those two notes over and over as before his other hand finds the central notes again.
Her feet scuff against the carpet rug and she pulls her shoes off, setting them with the four other pairs by the front door. His tempo is unfaltering and she doesn't wonder why he never bothers with the metronome anymore in practice. It sounds like a party of fairies, Jo thinks, knowing nothing about Paganini and technicality. She stands in the doorway and watches him play, head bent as his long fingers dance, dance across the keys.
His attention never wavers as he plays. It's mesmerizing, the concentration, the dedication, his full focus on the black and white keys under his fingertips, his head dipping forward with the harmonies he loves to play. His hair falls into his eyes and he does nothing but play on, the piece rising and falling so quickly it makes her think of the beat of her heart. His right hand scales, up and then down, up and then down, skill motivating the clearness of his playing. That is technique; she knows having spent so many hours sitting beside Beth as she ran through them over and over. It sounds strange to hear it in a song but with the precision the piece calls for, she thinks it fitting somehow.
The song moves further into the centre of the piano, becoming fuller, louder and she watches as his shoulders stretch with the effort, he leans a little backwards, immersed in the sound. His head is still down and she imagines his eyes are shut, having heard this piece a thousand times she knows he has it memorized in that clever mind of his. Should he ever change the first song he plays she knows he would struggle to find his rhythm, his pattern again before he could move onto his compositions.
Finally the song escalates, a sequence of building notes, finished with a pressing of keys that seem somewhat random to Jo who now steps inside the room fully, closing the door silently behind her. It sounds complete when he pulls his hands from the piano and turns his head to the side.
"You move like a thief, you know." He says and his tone is still terse though she knows he doesn't mean anything of it.
Jo moves to stand behind him, her hands going to his shoulders. Even sitting down her giant of a husband is only a half a head shorter. She cannot tuck his head under her chin as she would Beth's to look over at his sheet music and ghost her fingers as he plays.
"La Campanella?" Jo asks and he nods.
"It's a lot easier in this key," he says, moving the sheets around as her fingers slide down his chest and she leans into him. "You have no idea the hell A flat minor wrought upon your husband's soul."
Jo smiles and Laurie relaxes a little more, throwing the music on top of the piano. "I'll never be a Liszt or a Chopin, but there's something to be said for being able to play such a piece."
"Well I'll never be a Dickens or a Shakespeare but that doesn't stop me from writing either."
Laurie twisted to look back up at his wife, a smile on his lips. "You're a great deal more interesting than either one of them. Imagine my marrying Dickens! Although I wouldn't have said no to Bryon."
"Nobody could refuse anything to that man." She laughs, kissing him on the cheek.
"Well I'd rather like to think you'd say no."
Jo smiles mysteriously and he narrows his eyes but somewhat ruins the effect by grinning back.
"I guess I'm lucky we neither of us are bigamists."
"Evidently," she says, moving around the stool to sit beside him. "I had no idea you felt so strongly about Lord Byron, Laurie."
"Well if we can go to our graves with one man as a mutual interest we'll have lived a full life." He watches her from the corner of his eye as he finds the next piece of music to play. She sits on her hands and tries to think why the itch is so much worse the closer she is to him.
"I hardly think Byron is the only mutual interest we have," Jo turns to look at him as he goes about setting up his music and stretching his fingers. Her chin is tucked into her shoulder at that odd angle and she practices looking at him through her lashes. Laurie pauses and he turns to face her too, folding his hands in his lap like a schoolboy caught with his hands in the sweets jar.
"Oh?" She recognises that look and wonders if she truly meant what he has clearly decided she means. Her heart thumps a little quicker and the itch inside her makes her want to tear something in half as his eyes darken.
"Yes, think of… poetry for instance."
He looks unconvinced and she swallows. "Acting, cats…" She struggles to think of anything else other than the feeling of his breath on her face and the strength of his arms as he cages her to the chair, hands on either side of the stool.
"Cats?" Laurie repeats, his voice deadpanned. Jo nods slowly and tilts her head upright towards his, licking her lips and his eyes follow the action.
"Beth's cat did choose your arms to run to," she says.
"That was a long time ago."
"I'm glad of it."
"How glad?" He challenges her and her hand catches in the linen of his shirt as she kisses him. His tongue slides over her lip and she moans, her fingers sliding over the smoothness of his cheek. Their kiss is slow, deep and she feels just bordering on intense. His hands have left the chair and press into her back as his head twists to meet hers.
They pull apart for breath and he is smiling. "That was well done. I think you've proven you point."
"I have?"
"Yes, and quite admirably sir." His nose presses against hers and she can't stop smiling though the itch has leaped from her stomach to her chest and she doesn't want him to stop touching her. "We've more in common than I thought. Who knew a passion for cats would land us here this very day?"
"Something tells me it was more than a love for cats that prompted our first introduction, Teddy."
"I'd hardly call discussing cricket and handing back your cat an introduction." Laurie releases her and turns back to his piano, lazily playing a few notes not from the sheets in front of him. The sound of the notes sends an unexpected thrill through her. He watches her mouth curl in memory of their second introduction behind a curtain at that party.
"Was the other one any better? As I remember it you were hiding out back for fear of strangers."
"How is your cat Mrs Laurence?" He asks cheekily and Jo laughs outright, swinging her feet beneath her on the stool.
"How small your hands were," Jo recalls, placing her own hand on his much-grown ones that still against the keys at her touch. "I'd have wondered if you could have made an octave back then, but you played remarkably well when I came over."
"I thought I'd never forget your praise that day, but there – I've stored up so many more conversations between us there isn't any room for it." Jo blushes, pushing aside thoughts of his sentimentality, remembering things long-past said and concentrates on making him flush instead.
"Perhaps you might perform for some further praise?"
Laurie watches her steadily for a moment. "A performance? huh." he sounds mystified.
"Of some sort," she says, sliding off the stool as he starts to play.
Immediately his right hand presses out chords, his left dancing in a funny run of notes that remind her of the last song yet sound so different. There's no pause or falter, even when she slips her hand down the front of his waistcoat, the buttons catching on her palm. He plays, the tune so sprightly and well-timed, patient in its happiness that she can't help but smile as she leans over his shoulder, distracting him terribly when her lips touch his ear.
His breath his sharp and the notes start to fade as her tongue finds the shell of his ear. She hardly moves before he is racing to finish the end of the song and she wants to laugh into his collar as her fingers fiddle with his tie, pulling out the pin that holds it to his shirt.
It sounds like sliding and skipping as the song nears its end before steps of chords bring it to a close.
"So short?" Jo questions, trying not to smile as he pulls her around the chair to stand between his legs. She makes quick work of his tie.
"Chopin," he breathes.
"It was hardly a minute! Think I'm going to need a little more than a minute to find something to praise, don't you?"
Laurie is looking at her mouth and she has unbuttoned the top of his shirt. He pushes the paper behind her away and his hands shake with indecision. She knows he would rather push her into the keys and have it out now but the itch inside her is begging to be drawn out and demands that she make him wait.
"More Chopin?" he asks at last and she kisses his neck as he scrambles for the paper, never leaving his seat.
Something inside of her wants to laugh at him, laugh at his thinly veiled eagerness. It wants to laugh at her, at her clumsy attempt to please him out of his recent anxieties and linger in the thumping of her heart as he plays his piano.
The first notes startle her out of her musings and she tugs the ends of shirt out of his trousers as his fingers run up and down the notes, so much more torrid than before. It's the song; she tries to remind herself, hearing the differences so strongly. But it isn't just the song, she knows when she slips her fingers under his waist band and his hips shift.
Jo wonders if she is smiling like the cat in the cream because she can't help it when he hits all the wrong notes and has to start the passage again. Her fingers move from his back to his front and then his hips really do move as she drops to her knees. His notes fall softly into silence as the sound of his trouser button popping replaces all sound in the room. He looks down at Jo who's certain her cheeks are flaming at her own boldness by now but resolutely stares at the pattern of his waistcoat. She can feel his eyes burning a hole into the top of her head as she touches him through the fabric of his johns and feels quite certainly a familiar hardness.
"Jo," he groans but she withdraws her hand and flicks her eyes up to his.
"Play."
He obliges immediately, returning to the louder parts of the song, a continuation of the same running notes in that daring key. His left hand now pounds the chords as hers feels for the shape of him, frustrated by the layers of fashion. It might have been easier to wait for bedtime but she has gone too far.
The song draws to a sudden close and because she cannot read music she is unsure all Chopin should take so little time. Jo moves her hand to her husband's hip as he looks down at her expectantly.
"Praiseworthy enough?"
Jo pretends to take some time to think about it but he pulls her up by her arms anyway and kisses her.
"You shouldn't have made it so hard to concentrate. I slurred the second half of that song terribly."
"You shouldn't have dropped off like that half-way through! What happened to all that dedication to your art, Teddy? Perhaps you need the metronome after all." He kisses away her teasing smile and they fight, fists in hair, tongues against tongues as he clambers for the catches in her dress.
"Why must you wear so many skirts?" he growls, finding it impossible to reach through for the hooks to her hoop.
"Because there would be ridiculous gaps in my dress with this ridiculous new fashion. Why must you wear so many layers?" Jo pushes him, stepping away to lift her skirts ungracefully, heedless of the sight she presents to her husband who laughs. His hand covers his mouth as she finds the ties for her bustle and with a no-fuss attitude removes the heavy shape and throws it to a chair in the corner. Jo rearranges her petticoats before stepping forward to kiss him again as though nothing has happened.
"Your trousers, please," she says simply when they pull apart and he has to laugh again. The sound makes her feel light, almost dizzy as he worms out of the woollen material and throws it alongside her bustle. Laurie unbuttons his johns, just enough before she steps over him, kneeling against the stool to cover his modesty with her hips. He mashes his lips to hers, fingers prying at the buttons on the front of her dress.
It is suddenly insufferably hot under her layers and Jo peels along with him, struggling to keep one hand on his neck as he tries to keep one on the piano keys behind her. The clanging sound hits her ears as his hand pushes up her skirts and slides against her leg, up and up, past her knee, past her stockings, along her thigh until he holds her hip. She presses against him and he rises up, off the stool to push her against the piano. The sounds is horrifying and disjointed as they bump into the keys and she is tempted to make him play around her, if only to drown out the sound of their breathing in the empty room.
His fingers unknowingly oblige her and she moans as he kisses her throat. Jo's dress is finally pushed off her shoulders, the bunched material of her skirts press against the scattered keys Laurie absentmindedly plays as he kisses her. She feels so light-headed but the itch feels almost non-existent in her position.
Jo wraps her legs tight around his waist and he focuses on the skin of her breasts through the sheerness of her camisole. His mouth is like a furnace, stoking the pleasure that shoots straight to that place between her legs where she can feel him growing, wanting. Gone is the boy-turned-man drowning in his Grandfather's work and the pressure from his peers and in its place is her husband, pushing her into his piano.
Roughly he pulls her drawers down and off, finding a better use for his fingers as they play a new rhythm, not nearly so fast as the technicalities of Chopin and Liszt. Far more important, Jo thinks selfishly as Laurie strokes and strokes, languid in his desire to make her call out.
She wont, she rarely does. Only chokes and chokes on the feelings, grounding out his name in the lowest part of her register, a sound that makes the muscles in his stomach turn under her fingers. Jo can only feel his understanding under her fingertips and so she traces his brow, his shoulders, his back, his hips. The buck into hers as his hand pulls out and grips her waist firmly.
Jo's head falls back and her shoulders jut into the top of the piano painfully but it's worth it. That first fill, the moment where sound is unimportant, irrelevant as he seeks to fill her, strong and always slow. That first moment. Jo pulls her head up and tucks it into his shoulder as his hand scrambles for purchase against the black piano top. She is throbbing now, not itching anywhere inside.
This is what she has wanted, what her body has called for her today. The rain, she thinks has something of an affect over her and perhaps it isn't strictly fair but she's hardly one to complain.
Laurie grunts over her head, shifting his hips so that he pushes in and pulls, almost out, over and over like scales on the keys under her. It's slow and sliding for a moment and she thinks of the last song he played, punctuated with chords at the end of each run, punctuated with such sharp pleasure.
"Teddy," she gasps into the linen of his shirt, the material scratchy against her lips. He responds in kind with sharper movements, spiking the sensation that compels them both. Her hands are so tight around his arms and he leans heavily into the piano as though he can drive her through it.
It burns and coils its way sudden and hot and fast like molten wax, fizzling through her veins just as he finishes with a desperate "Jo!" on his lips, falling into her. She pulls his hand from her hip and directs him to finish and he does, with great ease. The feeling of his thumb, pressed hard and quick tips her off the edge and she arches and calls and stretches for him and thinks of the crescendo to his La Campanella. It is a sweet moment before she can think again and he pulls back hold her face in his hands.
"Now that was well done," Jo says, sliding off the keys with a clang.
"Something praiseworthy?"
She laughs and looks down at them both. There is a mess down the fabric of his johns and he looks like some dirty cartoon, hanging out of his buttons, wearing an unbuttoned vest and askew shirt, his socks and shoes still on. Jo isn't much better, her undershirt hanging off her left shoulder, her dress sleeves uselessly pushed by her sides and too much skirt pooling at her feet.
"Perhaps, but we wouldn't want your head to grow fat now would we?" Jo leans against his piano, careful to keep her hands from the keys. Laurie rolls his eyes, thinking, she presumes, of his grandfather's advice long ago when she carried blancmange and cats in a basket.
"Well Jo, I think it's safe to say we can both go to our graves with a life well lived at any rate. With or without Byron's help." He steps forward and kisses her briefly before rearranging his sheets, schooling his face into disinterest for her presence.
"Have you thought of work in the past hour?" she asks, stopping his fussing with a hand on his arm.
"I have now you've mentioned it!" he says before sighing and turning. Laurie pulls her into his arms and sits on the stool, looking up at her. "No, you wonderful girl, I haven't. I suppose I have you and this piano to thank for that?"
Jo's mouth twitches into a smile. "Well, I will own the instrument certainly played its part."
Laurie smiles and it is the same lazy, wide and unabashed one she has only known him to wear for her. "It is a godsend." Jo buttons up his johns, not knowing what to say when she knows such direct praise is cleverly meant for her. His arms, linked behind her waist fall to her backside as he pulls her forward and kisses her.
"The back of your dress is wet," he says when they pull apart. Jo raises one hand to her cheek before declaring that they redress.
"You know, we should probably bathe too." Laurie suggests and Jo's eyebrows shoot up to her hairline as he refuses to loosen his arms. "Why not? We probably smell a bit, you know… after…"
"Oh alright, grab your things and I'll run the bath. I swan though Teddy, if you dare duck me under again you'll rue the day you were born." Jo says pointing disturbingly to his johns. Laurie frowns only for a second before he runs about the room for their clothing and races her up the stairs with a mad grin on his face.
Fin.
A/N: for those of you who care, the songs used for the making of this fic are 'La Campanella' in G Sharp Minor (Franz Liszt), and the Chopin were Etude No. 5 in G Flat, Op. 10 (Black Keys) and Etude No. 12 in C Minor, Op. 10 (Revolutionary). As I understand it they are very difficult pieces but I always thought if Laurie loved music so much he must've been brilliant at it. /nerd
Also I should say I really don't know how to play piano (the nun teaching me left after grade 1 thank you, thank you) so sorry for those who do and if my descriptions were painful. This was just a bit of fun for my fav pair.