So yes, I've started writing fic with strange regularity again. And yes, this is "Little Women" (as in, by Louisa May Alcott!) fanfiction. And yes, this is about Jo and Laurie's extremely hypothetical wedding and even more hypothetical (a-hem) wedding night. And yes, it will have fairly explicit sex happening on-screen sooner or later.

Just when I think my fandom life can't get any weirder (terrifying pint-sized bride-grooms, anyone?), I have to go and prove myself wrong. But a watching the excellent 1994 Little Women movie on Youtube (with an adorable Winona Ryder as Jo and a delicious Christian Bale as Laurie) and reading some truly excellent Jo/Laurie fic on (check out anything by the Rese or Dream's Sister or Quirky Del!) has probably served as inspiration for naughtier things.

(Especially given Christian Bale's involvement...)

So while I didn't expect myself to come up with this fic even a week ago, I'm very, very happy to find myself in a new fandom and writing this story. And in any case, I do hope anyone who finds themselves curious enjoys the read. Thank you for putting up with me and the contents of my strange brain currently.

So without further ado, we may as well go onto the story!

Title: A Night To Remember, Chapter 1
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!

1.

For much of her life, the young Miss Jo March-- no, scratch that-- the youngish Mrs. Josephine Lawrence often thought of herself as a rather reasonable human being.

Of course, there were a few (and just a few, no matter what her new husband might believe) people who held an opinion quite to the contrary. There were even certain members of her own family who (if pressed) would admit that the newly married Mrs. Theodore Lawrence balanced an admittedly sharp mind with a wit that could draw blood with her tongue and a temper that could have made a dragon feel flighty. And if Mrs. Lawrence wasn't in a rotten mood from having been reminded of as much-- which was naturally unlikely, given this topic of conversation-- she might have even admitted that said people might have a tiny smidgen of a point. Intermittently.

Even her new husband, who adored her with a passion she found nearly as inexplicable as it was intoxicating, would have chuckled over the idea of his wife having a sweet temperament and reminisced over the many, many times in their life where her temper had managed to get the better of them. And moreover, if evidence was wanted to support his laughter, he had more than enough examples from the day they had met till the day they had wed-- up to and including the moment during their wedding when she had nearly punched him in the arm for teasing her about purposely wearing so opaque a veil to hide herself from everyone's scrutiny.

Regardless of such faults, however, Josephine Lawrence-nee-March usually considered herself to be a sharp, bright, canny young woman whose soaring flights of artistic whimsy were well balanced by her more practical side. And more often than not, even her doting husband would have to agree that such a description suited her-- which was only one of the many reasons she had married him eventually.

But as Jo stared into her mirror (which reflected pale, frightened, still alarmingly gawky reflection that looked almost indecently clad in the cream-colored nightgown that her sister Meg had made for her for her wedding night), only one coherent thought managed to flow through a mind that usually worked far more clearly.

And it was as followed.

My God. I am the single, most solitary, and stupidest creature on the good Lord's green earth for believing I could pull off being married to Teddy properly. What exactly is it that I think I'm doing?

2.

If the part of her that still remained sensible wanted to answer the question, it would have to admit that that wasn't even the best question to ask. After all, it would remind her if she allowed it to speak, being married to her old friend couldn't have been any more difficult than the process of agreeing to be married in the first place. Strange as her current dilemma was, it was no stranger than realizing that Jo March-- a girl long predicted to grow up to be a literary spinster-- had not only ended up married after all, but had also wed one of the most eligible bachelors her county had ever seen.

For one, outside of the giddy romance novels she herself wrote to make a living from time to time, it was exceedingly rare for handsome, charming, kind, and alarmingly wealthy young men to actually fall for-- let alone marry-- young, penniless, artistic women who they had passed their younger years with happily. And even then, when those matches did tend to happen, those young women tended to be model females in other ways, with enough feminine charm and astonishing beauty and prim, well-bred manners to make up for a lack of a dowry. Even in her own stories, Jo's quick mind and mad imagination couldn't quite justify matching a veritable prince or protagonist to a woman who couldn't match him in grace or beauty.

In short, Jo had long since realized that exceptionally desirable young men like her new husband tended to fall in love with women more like her sisters Meg or Amy than herself. Even in the wildest of novellas that she had penned for serials, she had never dreamed that anyone like her dear Laurie could fall for a cantankerous, impolite, high-spirited, unconventional, overly imaginative woman-girl who was still more than capable of running about in a wild frenzy at the age of twenty-two when inspiration hit her and who, even on her best days, rather looked like a gawky scarecrow plastered with the awkward facial features of a pygmy. The very thought of such a pairing seemed akin to mating a majestic unicorn with a knock-kneed, limping donkey.

Yet, for all her hopes and fears, she had married someone almost the whole society would consider far above her means. He in turn had been resolutely stubborn in pursuing her, despite all the unspoken prohibitions that should and could have kept them apart despite their own mutual, slow-burning feelings. And though it had taken her a very long time to realize it, she loved her new husband deeply as well, even if she'd been too ridiculously stubborn and scared of change and insensible to the tender clip of Cupid's arrows to realize it in the first place.

In the end, they had still manged to come together and make their halting way toward each other, despite all the obstacles that had littered their path previously. Despite her turning him down during his first, heart-breaking proposal for her hand. Despite the three years of enforced separation that had come between them after that. Despite the fact that he had spent all too long being a dissipated wreck in Europe and she had spent equally long being a miserable struggling artist in New York. Despite the fact that it had only been the terrible illness suffered by her sister Amy that had lured the both of them back to where it had all began and led them toward a sort of fairy tale ending...

Well, something in Jo ran hot and cold with both wistfulness and relief at the thought of their story together, at the the thought of how they had began as friends and almost ended their chance of happiness through mutual blindness and grief. Who, after all, could have predicted that their lives together and apart would have one day brought them to the point where she was fretting over being with him on their wedding day, instead of watching him stand up at the altar with someone else entirely?

At the age of sixteen, after all, Jo wouldn't have thought that she would one day end up married to her dearest friend were all the world being offered up in response to a correct guess. At the age of eighteen, she had refused to allow herself to even entertain the notion that her dear friend Laurie's slow laughter and tender eyes and fleeting touches could favor her above all the other women he could possibly meet. And at the age of nineteen, she had turned down his proposal despite the way it had turned some part of her inside-out to do so, sure that she was sparing him the pain of eventually regretting his inexplicable passion, even as the sight of his broken eyes and halting steps away had haunted her thoughts continually.

If life had not been kind to them, their lives together likely would have ended at that spot-- with her standing in that glen, tears already collecting in her eyes, haunted by that sense of what could have been, what would never be, ifs and whens and how comes, unkept promises and broken dreams.

Perhaps they would have eventually found their way back together; there was still Amy, after all, and Jo had never been blind to the soft blush that colored her youngest sister's cheeks when she spoke of Laurie in halting, fevered tones. Perhaps he would have married their way into their family, eventually, or simply became an old friend who would write solemn, meaningless letters to her once in a while, merely to keep in touch.

And yet, they would never had what they had in that moment in the woods, blind to everything but each other. Her hand in his and his lips turned to hers and the whole world stretching before them like paradise... a paradise she had told herself once would be folly to reach.

But life and fate, or chaos and chance, had been far kinder in sparing them both from such futures. Though Amy falling so ill in Europe had caused a great deal of panic and worry at the time, it likely was the only reason Laurie would have had to escort the youngest March sister back to the family home in Massachusetts, barring Laurie actually marrying her and carrying her back triumphantly. But instead of bringing back a blushing wife, he had arrived at Jo's door-step with a fevered patient, one who had needed all of Jo's patience and cajoling and tenderness and worry to bring her back to the world of the living.

And that was how their story had begun again, really.

3.

It had been a wet, cloud-strewn, bleary day in early spring when Laurie had arrived with his near-bride, with a pale and unfamiliar looking Amy by his side, looking as gray as the skies in the evening. A letter had come about his intentions a few days ago, and while her parents worried incessantly about their youngest daughter, Jo had spent her days crumpling paper and breaking the tips of fragile quills she could barely afford in the first place, wondering what would happen when he came, wondering what he would have to say and what she would have to see.

At first, she had even allowed herself to expect that his task of bringing her sister home would be one that he would carry out swiftly, cleanly, like an executioner garroting a hanged man efficiently. She had even found herself praying that her old friend-- though friend was a strange word to put to a man she had not hear a word from in years-- would leave as soon as he had done his solemn duty and he had left Amy with her family. Their first terrible meeting together-- which she had spent avoiding his eyes and bustling off to bring endless cups of tea for her sister-- had been excruciating enough. It seemed as though all he could do when she was about was tighten his lips into pale, thin lines and stare at her as though she were a cruel dream, or a lying phantasm, or merely the mocking edge of a memory.

She had hoped, more than anything, that her Laurie, the best friend she had ever had at one point in the world, would eventually, blessedly leave.

But he had stayed.

He had moved back into his grandfather's manse next door.

And he told them all that as long as Amy needed him, he had finally found a woman worth keeping.

And with that, Jo had felt as though he had struck a blade deep into her breast and watched as she had struggled with it as deeply as he had done once, when she had refused him three years previously.

It had been, on the whole, a miserable few months when he first entered her life once more and made himself neighborly, as though fashioning himself into a model brother-in-law for Josephine March to compensate for far stranger feelings. At first they had been cold to each other, chilly and overly polite, Jo's own mixed tenderness and mounting sadness towards her oldest chum dashed by Laurie's cool responses to her overtures of friendship and rediscovery.

Then, within a week, Laurie had suddenly become much warmer-- only in the worst way possible, as he began to alternate paying a restless, almost reckless courtship of Amy with paying attention to Jo in a way that made blood rise to her cheeks in embarrassment and fury. He would tease, provoke and follow her about, as though to get a rise out of her continually from acts as outrageous as sending off to Paris for silken sheets for her sister, or turning half the neighborhood about in his search for the perfect bouquet for his darling. In some ways, it was as though Laurie was deliberately trying to draw her into the spectacle he was making of himself and Amy, to show her the thousand small attentions he would have paid her had she the mind to accept him after all of his pleading.

A few weeks after, it had simply gotten worse when Laurie had invited a friend of his and Amy's, Fred Vaughn, to visit them in their mutual captivity. Although Fred had initially been an admirer of Amy's, he had seen the way Laurie paid court to her and chosen to back away judiciously, a tactic Jo envied him in entirely. And naturally, seeing how hopeless his former suite was, he turned his attention more toward Jo, though to this day, she still refused to believe he felt anything more than utterly understandable sympathy. And perhaps out of her own loneliness and need for a chum, Jo had reciprocated his feelings.

Fred and she had, she admitted, a rather unlikely friendship-- but was it truly any more so than the one that had existed between herself and Laurie previously? Jo herself hadn't thought so herself, though the comparison somehow made her feel oddly guilty. But that aside, after weeks of Laurie being something between a sore nerve and a nuisance, it had been a genuine relief to slip out of the house that Laurie and Amy were fast becoming love-birds in to take a walk with a new friend who spoke to her so kindly. He, after all, had seen the most magnificent sights of Europe, had read so many of the novels that she loved herself, and had experienced an education that Jo's eager mind was happy to dip into continually. They hadn't rambled about in the puppyish manner that she and Laurie had once spent their afternoons in... but he offered her a quiet companionship that she took to quite happily. And in turn, while Jo didn't delude herself into believing his fond words meant anything more than sincere affection, she did want to believe that Fred continued to visit the March house partly for her sake. His kind heart had realized what she had been going through as the man she... might still care for had began making love to her sister in earnest.

And though she had not known why at the time, Laurie had seemed to take deathly offense at that.

It simply hadn't made any sense then, though Jo had spent weeks wracking her brain to understand it. Laurie had all but placed streamers around Jo's house proclaiming his intent to marry Amy after her illness had past and Amy herself, though she seemed strangely listless, seemed to mostly agree. But as time had gone on, and she and Fred had become closer, Laurie's chill deepened into a winter of manners. Mere coldness became actual rudeness-- one that she often found herself protesting against furiously.

For a while, it seemed as though the two of them were fighting a cold war of attrition-- a battle that neither could win with ease and that both seemed in danger of losing. It was a battle that may have involved brutal words instead of blades and grimaces instead of guns, but it nonetheless felt deadly, as though every encounter of theirs was threatening to smash through something. And though they had the sense to tone themselves when it came to the eyes of others, especially those of her parents, it almost felt as though they lived in a sealed world of their own thorny relationship when they were together-- one where only they and the unresolved questions of their true affections had mattered, and their heart were ever of the verge of shattering.

It had all come to a head almost three months into their strange, mutual captivity, after he had finally brought Amy home to where Jo had broken his heart previously. Fred had offered her the long-awaited chance to go to Europe with his younger sister, as a companion to her, once he had realized how deeply Jo still smarted over being denied her chance because of Amy. They had been near the stairs, lingering close to each other as Fred had reached out to companionably clasp her hand-- something that he had never done before, though she had not pulled away, telling herself that it did not matter, that Laurie's opinion meant nothing. And she had still been caught between joy, surprise, and honest thankfulness when Laurie had seen them, flushed scarlet all over, and then retreated to the attic, as though intent on ambushing her eventually

And just like that, Europe hadn't mattered quite so much. Not when she had had enough and needed to understand why Laurie was the way he was. Not when her famous temper was raging at the contempt she had momentarily seen in his eyes. And not when she had the chance to dismiss a disappointed Fred momentarily and shake the truth straight out of the confounding man who now wanted to be her brother before he married permanently into her family.

So she had headed up the attic, armed only with her wits-- a weapon that felt paltry indeed when she remembered the look in his eyes, the cruel curve of his lips, and the resounding clamber of his feet.

The confrontation hadn't gone as Jo had planned. Truth be told, nothing had. Where she had expected he would confess that he had simply been driven to a short-temper by Amy's illness, he had sworn that he had her to blame for all of his mental lapses. Where she had hoped that he would agree to be happy that she finally had the chance to see Europe, he had swore that doing so on Fred's dime would only demean her entirely.

And where she had hoped (and of course it was only hope) that he would swear that his heart belonged to Amy and it was time to now mend his friendship with Jo...

He had finally looked at her with an honest gaze. He had finally shook his head no. He had finally stepped forward and touched her, his fingers like steel against her collar, as though trying to make her seem real.

He had finally told her that he had tried and failed. That he couldn't force himself to love another. And that he still wanted her-- Jo-- her, even after trying everything he could do delay his bastardous, unwanted feelings.

He had asked her, "And you don't feel any differently, do you, Jo? You still don't feel anything for me?"

It was difficult to say anything with her heart in her teeth, but something in her eyes must have given it away regardless. Something in her gaze that had made his breath strangle in his throat, that had brought the strange glimmer of hope back to his eyes, that had made him step forward hopefully.

And when he had reached out to press his quivering lips against hers, she had pressed herself back, damning herself momentarily.

She had never been kissed like that before, not by Laurie himself, not even by any of the men she had met as she had wandered through New York's strange streets. He had nearly frightened her then by the depth of his passion and the force of his embrace-- but she could no more have wrenched herself from him than she could have moved against gravity or the seasons. His lips and his teeth and his hands and his tongue had nearly crossed the lines between pain and pleasure... but neither had she held back. She could still remember the pattern that her nails had left upon his neck as she had flailed and raged and kissed him back, hating herself for doing this with him and almost hating him as well... and yet, still driven mad by the sound of his breath, by the rasp of his tongue against her collar, by the rough pressure of his hands against her shoulders trembling. And he had sighed and whispered and moved against her, the beat of his heart tangible against his palm and the depth of his desire so painfully apparent that Jo felt as though she could drown in it eventually.

It was a kiss that could have lasted seconds, or moments, or even several hours. Jo had lost sense of all time, and the world beyond their mingling bodies, as she was lost within it, as though his love were a storm that she could sink into fully. And when he had pulled away, his eyes shattered and his lips wet and all of him hopeful and open and trembling...

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."

Author's Note: I always feel ridiculously nervous when I begin writing in a new fandom-- especially where it's one that ridiculously good people are already writing in. (And believe me when I say that the Little Women fandom is truly bursting with talent, especially compared to some of the more teen-friendly ones I've been in recently. Let's not even speak about some of the dreck you run into the Twilight section, honestly...) I will love, cherish and adore any comments and feedback, especially constructive criticism that anyone could give me now. And trust that I always return feedback on my fics, since talking to reviewers makes me happy!

Also, if anyone is interested in being my plot-beta, please let me know. If the writing gods are kind and I'm not drowning in work next week, chapter 2 will hopefully be written by then. But having someone to talk this story and its characterization issues over with, especially through AIM, would be amazingly helpful, especially if they've written Little Women fic in the past themselves.

In any case, thanks again for reading!