And so, part 3 of this story goes up! The joy of writing a series of shorts for a couple you love is really getting to write them so frequently, and in so many different situations. I can't wait until I get to write their honeymoon antics properly... now that is going to be wicked fun!

I should also probably mention that this series IS mostly compatible with A Night to Remember. The scenes from the wedding night might be a little different in terms of dialog but everything that comes during Jo and Laurie's marriage is consistent with the ANTR series. You don't need to read this series to understand the other but I did want to offer a fairly consistent portrait of how Jo and Laurie might get along.

Thanks as always for the reviews and encouragement, and I hope you keep reading!

Title: 20 Different Ways to Leap Through the Minuet, Part 3/20
Fandom: Little Women
Series: 20 Different Ways to Leap Through the Minuet
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Cast
Rating: R for allusions to sexual content
Summary: He has always know that she would be his downfall one of these days; he simply hadn't understood how deeply strange would be the attending circumstance. 20 different looks into Jo, Laurie, and the marriage that could have been.


3.

Dawn comes all too soon for them and he is wrung out, laughing tenderness and exhaustion into her dark hair. The rising sun paints her in stripes of coral and amber, and their bodies seem to press everywhere. He looks at her and he sees his future; he looks at her and glimpses his past.

He once told her: my parents would have adored you if only they'd had the chance.

He had never told her: I worry all the time that one day, you will fly away just like them.

"Don't leave," he whispers beneath her throat, feeling her skin shiver between her breasts. "Don't go, don't stray, don't fall away. I don't think my heart could bear it again."

He has never told her but in her luminous eyes, he can already see his secrets.

"Don't worry," she says, and her voice is sweet and low, until he knows she understands. "I think, this time, I'm yours for keeps. You can't return me even for store credit."

"That's good to know," he returns, and his heart rumbles low in his throat. "Your bag of escape tricks really had been confounding me for a few years yet."

She grins in that marvelous way he doesn't entirely trust, the shyness she still felt between their bodies slowly disappearing like so much mist. "Oh, I've gone on to learn a few new ones entirely! And if you don't mind a demonstration..."

Her hands tremble a bit when she reaches down, but her eyes are steady and alight with purpose. His hips jerk beneath her questing fingers, and when he finally manages to speak, he's a little breathless from her calluses.

"How long," he whispers against the soft coils of her serpentine hair, "have you known how to handle me so well?"

"Just now, but I'm naturally gifted," she loftily declares, her mouth running along in the way he knew it did only when she was nervous. "A prodigy, you might imagine! Give me the slightest bit of clue as to what to do and off I go with that! I bet in a few years, you'll be old before your time because of my expertise in lovering and hovering. It'll be very sad when you die early, although I'm sure you'll do so very happy. Afterward, I'll tell Amy to paint you so the children can admire you in your blooming, pre-Jo youth, and put up a very nice memorial plaque."

He guffaws against her hair and she snickers into his neck, and he wonders again why they hadn't done this before, why they had wasted so many years, why they had let so much time slip past their fingers when they could have had this, this strangeness, this happiness, this joy mixed with sheer madness.

"I'm sure I will," he tells her, a little helpless before her imagination, and then smiles again as she closes her eyes, clearly dramatically sketching out both of their tragic but very noble deaths, adding even more color to their already saturated proceedings.

Finally, she asks, very softly, "Did you really like the night that we spent together, Teddy? It wasn't... so very bad? Not even what I did just now?"

He knows he probably ought to be more sensitive but it's all he can do not to roll his eyes at how easily and how often she misses the point with him. "God, Jo, how could you doubt I enjoyed myself? If I liked what we shared any more, I probably would have exploded by now, leaving little bits of Teddy raining down all over."

"What?" she asks, looking confused. "Didn't that already happen last night? All over my legs and on my dr--?"

And then her face glows bright red in agonizing embarrassment at what she's just said while he howls his amusement.

He stops only when she's at the point where she looks increasingly homicidal, and when thrown shoes look about the only thing that'd pass between them. And now that they're married, even her annoyance doesn't keep him from thoroughly kissing her, petting and cosetting her into a state of mere annoyance.

"How could you think that?" he asks when he finishes, tender and curious, both amused and embarrassed. "How could you think I didn't like-- no, love-- being with you? Getting to hold you, touch you, do everything and anything I could think of to please you? Is it because you-- you didn't like it either?"

He had worried about that: that he would be too hasty, too greedy, move too swiftly in search of his pleasure and accidentally leave behind hers. And at least at first, he had thought he had carried it off quite well, using his hand and his lips and the angle of his hips to give her every pleasure his feverish mind could imagine. In turn, she had moaned against him, had guided his own fingers toward and within her skin, had whispered his name is soft surrender as she had given herself over. She had said oh, please and don't stop and even thank you after it had been done.

And yet--

Yet he had still wondered, in the morning after. Wondered, even as he had thought: I can't lose this. I couldn't bear it. Never her. Not again.

"Of course not," Jo says, sounding peevish, annoyed, and thoroughly confounding, the girl he loves and the woman he has married, dream and reality all at once. "It's just strange to do something without even really knowing what I'm doing. That's all. Although..."

If the previous grin had been untrustworthy, this one of hers could be a highwayman. He really ought to learn to be more careful around this bewitching woman. "Although we could address the situations with a few more dancing lessons. After all, I've always been an excellent pupil. Now, before I lose my nerve-- what other dances do you know? Have you got any more lessons?"

"Oh," he said finally, after he had finished thanking the Lord for his fortune assiduously. "I thought you'd never ask."

They spend the next three days going over the syllabus very carefully in their bed and Laurie's more thrilled to assign hard work than even ol' Brooke had ever, ever been.


Author's Note: I am, by the way, up to the point where I'm tentatively sketching out children for Jo and Laurie. Wouldn't it be fun if they ended up having a really big, wild family? Although for some reason, my mind keeps insisting that if they mated, they'd end up having... Anne of Green Gables (?!). Any suggestions on what to do and the number? ;)