There are a couple lines from the 2019 adaptation in here, which of course belong to Greta.
Laurie doesn't believe what he's hearing.
The words seep out of Jo like venom from a serpent's fang, and his skin stings under them. She speaks quickly, not meaning to bite and yet sinks in her teeth. The puncture is quick, but the poison courses slowly through him. He's listening, and he's trying to understand, because this is his Jo, and he's her Laurie, and how could she want things any other way? Wasn't she the one that dreaded change?
He stops her hastening apology with a shake of his head. "I can't love anyone else, Jo, I only love you."
There's nothing clandestine in that testimony. He has loved her from the moment he knew her, the moment they met, the moment she declared her passions to him, the moment he read her stories, the tales and the tragedies. From the moment she hit his arm, stole his cap, ruffled his hair. From the moment he recognized her sacrifices, for her freedom, for her family, for her sisters. He has loved her ever since he could read her mischievous glint and know by sight her tell-tale signs of tears. Ever since he has known her.
Again and again he has felt it, deep in him, the word only. It is not a lover's word, not a false promise of poets, because it is an absolute.
She is the sole keeper of all his secrets, down to this last verity.
Not missing a beat, she counters, "Teddy, it would be a disaster if we married."
He blinks. It's pointless to deny some things would change. Instead of meeting at the fence to make up, it would be by the stair or through the door. They would hold each other in new ways, but still it would be them, their infinite intimacy, Laurie and Jo, Jo and Laurie, it would follow them from adolescence to adulthood. He'd still chase her, still catching her at the waist and likely earning a pinch, but maybe stealing a kiss too. He'd still chase her, even though she'd be his, and he'd be hers. Isn't that what they had always been? What is she saying?
Disaster?
"It wouldn't be a disaster."
They talk over each other, and her desperation is on her face, he sees how far she wants to run. But why away from him? Jo March has always been running, headfirst, but from the moment she tripped into that back room he'd been running right alongside her. She taught him to run to things, instead of away. Not away from Vevay and Latin and orphan, but to the creek and around the apple trees, to mailboxes and into porch dances, to scribblings and sheet music. To the attic window. Laurie and Jo, Jo and Laurie. Did she not want that anymore? Inside him something trembles. He steps away, but she steps closer again, and that fear is quelled.
"Why are you saying this?" He asks finally, his eyebrows drawing together.
For a moment, neither speak, and that is when he sees it. She stands in front of him, for just a moment speechless, caught off guard by the softness of his tone. There's a flicker in her eyes as her throat catches on an inhale, and he lets go of his breath. For a moment, he hears nothing, because finally, he hears her. He sees her. There's Jo again, beneath these words. Now, in her eyes, it all makes sense again.
Because he knows when she lies.
"I can't," she begins again as she looks up at him, but her voice suddenly drops off in volume, and just as well. He can't unsee it now, the fear behind the fable she's spinning. They're words, but she's underneath them, below their asperity. They're close together, his hair grazing hers. His breaths come out quick and short, and it mixes with the wind in the wisps of her hair. "So I w—"
He cuts her off with his lips against hers. He holds back nothing, because she is everything, and she must know. In his kiss are his promise of long-ago, his askless devotion, his reassurance. In it is his bareness, his voice which only she's memorized, his reminder, I know who you are.
When he pulls away, she doesn't pull away more. She doesn't push him or slap him or fly away. She doesn't draw him back to her. Her heather eyes flick between his in a conflicted dance.
He leans in again, eyes roaming her expression, and she has every chance to stop him, but she doesn't and his lips press against hers for the second time, this time softly, slowly. His hand ghosts over her cheek before he retreats again.
He looks deep into her eyes, straight through to the soul there. He gently lets the skin of his palm touch her face, his thumb skimming over her lower lip. She closes her eyes, just briefly.
"Jo."
She looks up again, she lets him see, and like every time, he feels the weight of that privilege.
Warm breath intermingling, he asks her one last time to listen. "Jo, can't you see I'm not asking you to be a wife?" He gives her a little more distance, hand slipping down, and his heart flutters as her eyes drop to follow it, bewildered at it's absence. With another breath, his fingers intertwine with her ink-stained ones. He finishes with his most honest words, the truest words he can offer her. "I just want to be with you, always."
For a long time, she makes no reply. Laurie understands her fear now, of everything being different, of old things, even old lies, becoming lost to them. But for as long as they stand in this frozen moment, standing on the edge of the cliff, they are between running from it and flying. He can't run—he knew today his whole soul would be bare to her, for even though it always had been, he had made her see it. Made her consider it, asked her not to turn away, offered her a chance to bare hers too. A chance to fly with him.
But for her, he could fall. He would let her run, run away, for the first time, if that's what she chose. Even knowing how she felt now, even knowing should she deny it, it would quicken his death. Her poison fiction would take him. But for her, anything. For her, everything.
And then, like dawn breaking, Jo grins. Before he can so much as register it she presses herself to him, no breadth left between them, and crashes her mouth against his. Her kiss is rough and unpracticed and Jo, and immediately he returns her ardor, her hands in his hair, his angling her jaw. Where she tugs and pulls, he caresses. Eventually she softens her kiss, and he deepens it until there is no air left between them.
Then they hold each other, in their new and familiar way. They've always been who they are. They know each other's crevices and fountains, their highest peaks and deepest darkness. The embrace is the same as always, her gangly arms squeezing him, his sharp chin in the crook of her neck.
"Teddy," she says against his shoulder, and he thinks he's never been so full, so whole in his entire existence. He hums in reply.
"Be with me, then." Jo breathes as though all heaviness has left her, and she squeezes tighter before she goes on.
"Meg told me childhood would end, one way or another. She found happiness in it. I tried, and I couldn't." He feels her shake her head, can tell her eyes are squinting at the sky. "I couldn't see how an end could be a happy one, because it's still an end."
Jo pulls away slightly, fiddling with her ring on his finger. He brushes the floating tendrils of her hair away from her face, touches the collar of his waistcoat around her neck.
"But it's not quite an end, is it?" he asks.
She shakes her head, scratches her nose. She bounces a little on her feet, eyes flashing with old joy. She sees him. "Not with us, it isn't."
Laurie smiles a little and pecks her lips. Evidently it's not enough for Jo, who pulls his mouth down fully to hers, and his heart soars underneath her fingertips. It was not an ending for them, or even a proper new beginning, but a continuation, a renewal of endless togetherness. Jo and Laurie, Laurie and Jo.
Hearken: to listen with your heart.
a/n, short and concise: This is not at all my typical writing style. It was all Laurie.
a/n, long and rambling: I've been working on a longer fanfic from Jo's perspective for a long time now, but last night I rewatched the 2019 adaptation, and Laurie spoke to me, pleading for me to write him. I've never had such an insistent muse. This whole fic just spilled out of me, which never happens; I'm a really slow, meticulous writer. I'm thinking of maybe adding a chapter of this same scene in Jo's perspective. Let me know if that's something you'd like to see.
Either way, I have a couple other Little Women stories in the works. I don't know when I'll share them, since I only share completed works (never will I torture others the way I have been, with annual updates and dead ends *shudder*), and things are slow-going (for many reasons, bc I'm slow, bc I jump from project to project and never finish, bc I've been very sick the past few months), but once they're finished they'll be here. Anywaysss thanks for reading, reviews are appreciated should you feel so inclined. Whatever's going on in your life, I hope you're doing well and this fic was a nice little escape into Laurie's soul :)
~Briz