Chapter Text
“that untalented, insufferable, egotistical old lout!”
Laurie wrestles down the grin threatening to break his face in half, can’t help but think Joe’s dramatics are equal parts ridiculous and overblown.
“You’re still ranting about the professor?” He asks with a mild quirk of the brow.
“Yes! The dick!”
“The published author?”
“The one who gave me a C on my latest short story!” Joe corrects caustically, face flushed and fists clenched.
“What a wicked monster,” Laurie deadpans, crunches up from his lounging position so that they’re sitting side by side on the lounge’s sectional. “How dare he not spot the genius behind this generations very own Dickens!”
With pinched lips, Joe follies him a properly scathing glower.
“You are such a smart ass Teddy, are you aware?”
“Lucky me I’ve got you to remind me once I start to forget,” he goads, ruffles a hand in her messy tresses, which makes her shoulder check him in turn.
It’s so easy that Laurie can hardly believe it. He looks at her now, at Joe’s crooked smile and the dimple on her chin, and he sees the girl who grabbed his hand his first day in the fifth grade and proclaimed that they’d be the best of friends for the rest of time. He sees the girl who he’s loved for as long as he could remember and the girl who he’ll always call his best mate. They almost lost one another after graduation, he had been so insistent and sure and unswerving, but Joe had been as effortlessly knowing as ever.
We would end up hating one another Teddy. You just want to fall into the familiar because that’s all you’ve ever known, all you’ve ever wanted to know.
That had hurt like nothing else, and Laurie thought it was a wound that would never scab over. But then the summer came and went. Joe had left to her New York internship, and Laurie had escaped to Europe with his grandfather and they hadn’t exchanged a singular text or email or call. But then the autumn breeze had trickled into the dying summer heat. And they found each other again. The best of friends for forever, and nothing more.
Laurie’s wound had healed without his even realizing it, nothing left in its wake other than the nostalgia of childhood days, frothy and gleeful and ever so easy.
“What’s got you in such a foul mood?” She gripes.
“I’m in a perfectly fine mood Joe, you’ve just got a big head.”
She tosses him the bird right then and Laurie can’t hold back his snickers for any longer.
“Oh I know what it is!” Joe crows, suddenly gleeful and punching his side with frantic hands. “Tonight’s the night you’re forced to take our dear little Amy the Brat to her prom!”
“Amy’s not a brat Joe,” Laurie toots, clucks his tongue at her attitude
“Oy, course you don’t think so, she’s been smitten with you since before she gave you that awful mold of her stinky little foot when we were ten.”
“That was cute,” Laurie chuckles, has always found Amy’s school girl crush on him endearing. It’s been nearly two years since he’s actually seen her, what with his and Joe attending University in Boston now and considering that the last Christmas he had spent at the March household she had gone abroad with their Aunt. He’s been roped into this by over hearing her sobs while Joe was catching up with Meg on the telephone. Laurie loves each of the March girls, of course he’d offer escorting her for the night after her “no good, dirty mongrel” of a best friend had asked out the boy she was waiting on.
“Cringing and egotistical you mean?” Joe says, gets up now to start collecting her things.
“Pot calling the kettle egotistical?”
Joe’s smile goes vicious and Laurie is only mildly terrified.
.-
Another hour passes and the pair of them take the train to Concord.
The March estate is beautiful in it’s modesty, covered in the greens of spring while ringing out with the warmth and love Laurie has always been blown away by witnessing, ever since moving here from upstate New York and somehow being given the permission to infiltrate on the sacred bond between the little women next door.
They step through the threshold and it feels like nothing at all has changed.
“You think she’s plastered on enough makeup to look like one of those old time Hollywood stars?” Joe asks mulishly, taunting sneer set on her lovely lips.
“Don’t be rude my love, it’s not a pretty color on you,” they both look up, Joe leaping into her mother’s arms the moment she could.
“Marmee I’ve missed you!”
“Me so much more my little love,” she beckons Laurie to join them, gets on the tops of her toes to kiss his temple in greeting. “Little Amy can’t stop singing your praises. You’ve truly saved her.”
“Of course Marmee, anything for the girls.”
The way her gaze softens at that makes Laurie proud that he’s earned that trust, but also suspicious towards the March matriarch, a woman who knows practically everything before it even happens.
He has no time to question her though, their conversation is interrupted by a glowing Meg, and Beth, both announcing the final March sister going out to her final formal.
“Oh how tragic,” Joe rolls her eyes, but the soft smile curling the ends of her lips gives her away— she’s just as excited as the others.
Another beat passes and Mr March, preening and delighted, glides down the stairs, arm in arm with his youngest.
And oh.
Laurie’s nearly forgotten that little Amy isn’t quite so little anymore. Of course she’s gone ahead and grown into a young lady, one as beautiful and breath taking as all her other sisters.
He vaguely takes notice of the squeals escaping the lips from the other four, and the lecture Mr March feels indebted to give even if he’s considered Laurie a practical son for nearly a decade now. He smiles and holds onto Amy for as many photos as the Marchs demand, and he makes sure Amy is steady coming down the stairs of their porch before they walk to his grandfather’s old Jag across the way.
He never takes his eyes off of her.
Amy’s golden hair is done up in some sort of elaborate up-due that he knows she’s always favored for special occasions like these, and the deep violet of her gown makes her emerald eyes all the more piercing. And God, she’s beautiful. And God Laurie can’t stop staring.
“I don’t even know how to thank you,” Amy dimples up at him, still so tiny and so utterly beautiful.
“Ames don’t mention it,” he tells her, helps her get into the car before he saddles into the driver’s seat. “Of course I’d help out.”
“But you came all the way from University, and had to find a suit and get your grandfather to lend his car,” she begins to ramble, and it’s so nice to know that there’s still some level ground here. Nice to know that even if she’s all grown up, she’s still little Amy.
“Don’t be silly Amy,” he intones, gives her a meaningful look as he pulls into the main road to get to the hotel where her prom will be taking place. “I’d do anything for you.”
A quiet collapses over them right then— not taught but not easy either. When Laurie finally musters up the courage to cut a gaze her way he finds her eyes set towards the distance, and her smile so quiet and reserved that it’s frankly unsettling.
“You’re not seeing anyone Laurie?” She asks, completely out of the blue. Laurie’s confused as all get out as he answers with a small shaking to his head. “You’re still recovering from Joe then?” She surmises.
“What?” He asks, now completely flabbergasted.
“No shame in it Laurie, we March girls are a intoxicating lot,” she says airily, almost without feeling. “We were all so shocked that she didn’t say it back to you, I swear that sister of mine is mad! Completely off her rocker to let a guy like you slip out her grasp.”
Laurie isn’t sure if he should thank her or correct her, opts to not say anything. Rather, Laurie focusses on this entirely unpleasant feeling that’s burrowed itself in his gut, a sensation of wrongness. Perhaps it’s just come about from how suddenly little Amy March has got him feeling so wrong footed.
“Just take the left here, and we’ll be there.” Amy tells him, and the moment passes.
.-
“It’s beautiful,” Laurie says the moment they walk into the ballroom.
“It’s okay,” Amy corrects reprovingly, dent between her brows that Laurie would really like to wipe across with the pad of his thumb. “I told them that pastels would make for a better esthetic, but no they just had to argue that putting the schools horrid colors would make it more spirited.”
His mouth dips down into a grin, has always found Amy’s pursuit of perfection one of her more charming qualities.
“You helped put this soiree together?” he asks, lets himself be lead to the refreshments table as Amy follies nods and grins towards other vibrant faces as if it were an olympic sport.
“Well of course Laurie,” she teases, laughter in her eyes and the sparkling lights from above kissing the tops of her cheeks so tenderly that she blows him away all over again. “The student body president isn’t just a pretty face.”
Laurie pretends that he doesn’t feel the heat rushing to his ears after she winks for good measure, is thankful Amy doesn’t catch it on account to another friend calling hello.
“Little Amy March is the president of her student body?” He snorts, is careful when he tugs back a rebellion curl behind her ear.
“I’ve always hated you all calling me that,” she harrumphs, pours them each a glass with an imperious tilt to her pale head. “An yes of course I am. You aught to have known that Laurie.”
“Forgive me,” he thanks her before excepting the drink. “It’s just I seem to remember Joe preferring to skip half the day of classes over attending even one of the school’s rallies.”
“Well duh, Joe’s the liberated one.” Amy says in such a dry tone that Laurie honestly feels a bit dim for not immediately understanding that just because Joe had an infamous disgust for school functions, it didn’t mean that would prove true for the other sisters as well.
“Is that right?” He asks, his hazel eyes boring into her emerald ones with more intensity than intended. Though he must admit the way she reddens just slightly does make something splendid blossom in his chest.
“Yes. Joe’s the brightest and most liberated one of us. Meg’s the most beautiful and love sick. And Beth, well Beth is the best of us all.”
Laurie thinks those are unfair assessments. Far too shallow, and far too rigid. But he plays along, if only because he’s enjoying himself far more than he could’ve ever imagined.
“And you?” He asks with a tip of his drink.
“Me?” She repeats, perplexed sounding.
“Yes, you Amy. What are you.”
She shrugs her bare shoulders, expression indifferent. “I’m the leftovers. Not as pretty as Meg, or as talented as Joe, or as kind as Beth.”
“Bull shit,” Laurie says so quickly that it even takes him aback. “You’re remarkable Ames.”
“I’m sufficient,” she says, voice now completely stripped from all its lovely inflections and lilts. It sounds bare, and Laurie never thought he could hate a tone so much, but here he is.
“Bullshit,” he repeats with such feeling that he has to slam down his drink, can’t even believe what he’s listening to her say out loud, what she must somehow believe.
“You’re nice, you’ve always been so nice Laurie,” she says with a smile so small that it doesn’t even touch her eyes.
Laurie wants to tell her that she’s insane. He wants to tell her that she’s beautiful through every layer. Wants to tell her that she’s one of the only people who can make him laugh without even expecting it. He wants to tell her that only someone brilliant can do as much as she does.
He tells her noen of that.
“Fred!”
“Excuse me?” Laurie squints down at her, turns around when she gestures to the boy standing behind him, a vaguely familiar face that he recognizes from the excruciating dinner parties his grandfather had dragged him to throughout his adolescents.
“Amy you look radiant,” he says, doesn’t bother to acknowledge Laurie.
“Oh, thank you,” she ducks her head and it’s the first boy that isn’t him that makes Amy blush like she were that starry eyed school girl all over again.
Laurie comes to the conclusion that he does not like this Fred fellow, not even slightly.
“May I?” He asks her, hand open.
Amy flickers a gaze up at Laurie and he realizes that she actually wants to dance with this prick.
“Oh, ah yeah. Yeah go ahead.”
She mouths her thanks before gliding off with Fred, and well everything feels off kilter now.