Another week, another chapter! Simply because this story is so fun to write and so easy to update, I'm going to try putting up a new chapter up every Tuesday/Wednesday, with an option for putting another up on the weekend if I can't write anything else. (Although I really should... how long have I kept people waiting for the next chapter of A Night to Remember? Poor Laurie's been waiting approximately three months to finally get some consummation from his marriage... it'd be cruel to make him wait much longer. Especially when there's Jo's kinky demands to deal with...)

In any case, thanks as always for the lovely reviews and I hope you keep following the story! Some of my favorite chapters are coming up, although I do like the ones I've put up already...

Title: 20 Different Ways to Leap Through the Minuet, Part 4/20
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.

4.

She is named like a boy and is just as rough and tumble, her dark hair forever astray from her dear face and long forehead. His name belongs properly to a girl, and he is groomed much like one, his hair sleek and his skin soft, his trim form always dressed in the latest fashions. He moves some of the finest circles in Paris with enviable grace, while she struggles not to trip over her own feet in a more public dance. He always knows what to say while words trip off her tongue in a less-than-stylish fashion. Where he is grace, she is haste, and when they walk arm and arm in public places, they sometimes draw stares for looking so mismatched.

They are a living contradiction together, and yet.

("I know you and you know me," she explains to him when he asks for reasons. "And no one else in the world can make me quite so happy or sad."

He says nothing, only stares at her intently, memorizing her and the moment.

"What?" she asks finally, looking worried. "Do I have fireflies in my hair again?")

Somehow, they make sense.

For their honeymoon, they visit the Old Continent for the first time in their young married life-- and Laurie can only be horribly amused by the figurative carnage they leave behind in all the parlors that greet them.

It really comes as no surprise; he has, after all, married a woman who had first introduced herself by speculating on whether or not he had raised a European captive in his native land. Jo took to civil, polite, meaningless society conversation in much the same way a band of vikings might take to a huddle of monkish men-- and left much the same aftermath. After a visit from her, many a society matron threw up their hands and wondered when the barbarian onslaught would end. It's far more entertainment than he ever thought possible in the 'brilliant' yet somehow deadly dull salons of Paris.

She bites her lip nervously after the first of those visits, and will not allow herself to look at him. And it is only when they are back in their suite in splendid solitude once more does she turn her white face to him and whisper, "I'm sorry, Teddy. Forgive me for the disaster tonight! I will do better soon, I promise."

Half-way through replaying the evening with a lazy smile, he looks up. "What on earth do you mean?" he asks.

She turns a furious red and looks down at her bare fingers; she's lost her gloves once again. "I know your business partners probably assume you've ended up accidentally marrying an overdressed savage after that dinner party, if not a shaved orangutan. I made such a mess of things in front of all those fine ladies, didn't I? I felt like a fool among them."

Faced with her trembling lower lip, he turns contrite for a second, and presses a kiss to her hair. "Then we'll have to avoid them in the future; they rather frighten me as well." And when he sees that fails to press her customary light back in her eyes, he eases his hand down her rigid back and sighs against her neck. "And I really do mean that, Jo. They rather remind me of praying mantises. Do you think I'd ever want you to alter yourself to fit in better with them?"

"Well," she answers, still looking wry, "I truly could probably use a few improvements. Especially in the social department."

"In which case," he murmured, unable to keep himself from kissing her soft cheek, "you may as well also take me in for repairs. I could use a bit of a spruce-up myself; my axle wheel's all rusted in the back."

She laughs as he wants but something a little fragile stirs in her voice nonetheless. "Oh, don't make fun, please! Not here! I just..."

He's never liked seeing her dispirited. Not his Jo. Not bound to earth when she should be soaring high above all other humans.

"I just want to make things right for you and I... I hate..."

She looks contrite and he has no idea why, can't even begin to imagine.

"I hate," she whispers softly at last, "that I apparently can't."

And she would say something more except his lips are once again on her, trying to steal away all her grief with everything he has. He kisses her breathless, weightless, shameless and endless, trying to reassure her with all he can. And it's only when she's properly trembling and twisting in his arms, that he allows himself to laugh.

"What in the whole wide world," he tells her, and flashes a grin, "makes you think something as ridiculous as that?"

Unfortunately, Jo looks a bit too flustered still to respond in the way he had hope for. "Oh, I don't know," she murmurs instead, pushing him away with her deft little hands. "I suppose it was something about the way you introduced them as friends and people in your general social circle that made me wonder if perhaps you'd like me to make a good impression on them."

He sighs and cocks his head, still puzzled for all her explanations. "Wait, don't tell me. You actually took that seriously?"

She looks at him as though he'd announced that he had just arrived from another world and came bearing words of peace for the earth men. "Oh, hold on now... you mean tell me that they really weren't?"

"You are my best friend," he points out, lips quirking into an irrepressible grin. "Wife or no, you remain forever in that station. And as far as my calculations about how much they're worth to me have gone, they're only worth... oh... about one-thousandth of what you are. So in any gathering under that number, my concern for you far outweighs whatever I feel for them."

"That makes neither mathematical nor social sense," she tells him, although her mouth quirks up into that pleased smile of hers that he's been getting to know so well. "And also, Teddy, you're wonderful but you're additionally sort of a crazy person."

"But in a completely different way than you are. So that must mean we balance out quite well."

"That doesn't make any sense either," she murmurs, although her lips can't quite hide her smile even behind her curtain of hair.

"It makes all the sense in the world," he promises her, and chucks her gently below the chin so he can look at that smile properly again. "Remember what you said about us being a common species of lunatic?"

"Well, right now, you're making us seem as though we don't really have much lunacy in common..."

"And that's part of our charm," he airily promises, and presses a light kiss to her neck. When she gasps and tilts it back further, he leisurely goes on between caresses. "And anyway, who cares what they think of me?"

"Even when," she says when he doesn't have her lips otherwise occupied, "they think you've married a shaved orangutan?"

"Even when they manage that extraordinary stupidity," he murmurs against her nose and cheeks. "After all, it's not as though most of them are any better. I happen to know a good quarter of them are opium addicts, the other quarter married to them keep mistresses on streets their wives would faint to go near, another quarter consists of bitter, miserable people who torment and gossip about others to make themselves feel just a little bit better about their wasted lives and the remainders left over..."

She smiles, not looking nearly as shocked as he has hoped for. Her time as an independent in New York really did make her a great deal less naive that she had been before. "Can't come up to say anything about them?"

"There's not much worth saying when they're hopelessly proper and boring," he concludes primly, while she laughs. "So you see, you've got nothing to worry about! Oh, they can gossip about you and your lack of gloves and the way you accidentally destroyed their china for quite a while--"

"It wasn't my fault I've got uncoordinated elbows!" Jo wails.

"--But," Laurie continues on doggedly, "it's not as though they've got the collective power to-- God only knows-- chuck me out of my damn station. As long as I've got the money and the name, we can both move in and out of those circles as we please. You'd probably actually have to kill someone in order to be exiled permanently."

"Did I mention I've got uncoordinated elbows"" Jo asks plaintively. "I might one day, you never know. Although I probably wouldn't be morally at fault."

"I like your elbows," he insists stubbornly. "I've made their acquaintance very well over the last few weeks and I don't even mind having them shoved into my collar as we sleep anymore. And you don't need to fret so. I'll keep you from being convicted for homicide if I must and you, in turn, will have to promise me that you won't have to worry about this anymore."

"You say this only because I haven't actually gone and earned the death of someone. We'll see if you change your tune should the law ever come." And she smiles at him again-- that soft, radiant, self-doubting smile of hers that would always occupy a part of his soul. "And you're sure that having a social laughing-stock of a wife won't bother you at the least? Or bring you any trouble?"

"Absolutely sure," he promises with all his heart, and bends down to hold her once more. "It'd be illogical to be otherwise. After all, dearest Jo, you're worth a thousand of them put together, remember?"

"That still doesn't make any sense," she murmurs as she presses her hands tenderly to his chest. "And you are still a crazy person."

"So we've got something in common after all," he whispers, and takes advantage of her resulting laugh to kiss her senseless and pliant in his loving arms once more.

Author's Note: Thanks to Mezzo for giving me the idea of having Jo meet with-- and scandalize!-- Laurie's high society "friends." (Although given the fact that his version of going wild meant hanging around with them all the time, I wonder how friendly he truly is with them!) Jo probably would stand out like a sore thumb amidst a sea of properly manicured pinkies among them... but that's part of the fun, no? ;)

And as always, I love and adore questions, comments and constructive criticism. And if you have any story ideas, please bring them forward! If they strike my fancy (like Emerald's brilliant fencing idea), they'll show up in this story sooner or later.