By potix, featuring Laurie & Jo from Little Women, Exclusively For My Use

Though I'm still going to keep my posts/memes/essays for fandom public, I'm now going to friends-lock most of my other journal entries, including those that involve RL issues, fanfic requests/snippets/commentary, drabble posts, personal photos and general squeeage/wailing. I also lock all NC-17 rated fic after leaving them up for the public for a week or two. If you'd really like access to any and all of those things, please comment to be added! I'm friendly and I keep my nibbling discreet. ;)

Below is a list of... well... pretty much I've ever written, ever. What I personally am most proud of is marked with with the [Personal Favorite] tag. I hope you enjoy perusing!

( Disclaimer )

( Final Fantasy XII Fandom Works )

( Little Women Fandom Works )

( Naruto Fandom Works )

( Miscellaneous Fandom Works )

( Picture Posts )

And comments, corrections and criticism are, as always, completely welcome and loved! After all, a little encouragement never fails to add a bit of inspiration...

Part of the fun of being in fandom consists of twisting canon to shape your needs and desires! And is there a better time for said shaping than All Hallow's Eve? In the spirit of adventure, I want to present the second foray into the supernatural that the Little Women fandom has to offer. I can only hope others enjoy the chill in this story... especially since, sadly, it'll be one of the last fics I can put up during this year.

Title: Scarlet and Ivory
Fandom: Little Women
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Laurie/Amy, Cast
Rating: Hard R for very strong implied violence/licentiousness.
Summary: Blood, sin, spite, sex, and sisterly resentment. A tale of horror within the Little Women-verse for Halloween 2009!

Warning: This being a Halloween fic, it's deliberately written to be as disturbing as it can get. Be aware that the better angels of everyone's nature are not currently present. It also contains non-graphic violence and disturbing sexual innuendo. Please don't read if you feel you can't handle seeing this in a classic text!

( And sometimes Jo thinks, deep in the night, that Laurie never truly leaves. )

Apologies ahead of time if I'm very unavailable this week-- I've got a killer presentation coming up that's academic life-or-death for me. I'll try to catch up next weekend!

Great news!

The awesome Yuletide Obscure Fandoms Fic Exchange (which always manages to get a nice treasure trove of Little Women fic every year) has now opened up for nominations!

That means that if you nominate the Little Women fandom for inclusion in the Yuletide Fic Exchange at this form on the site, we could potentially get a lot of great new fic for the fandom by Christmas. And I for one would love it if people could nominate Little Women-- I definitely want to have more excuses to write more heart-warming Jo/Laurie fic!

And of course, you can nominate plenty of other obscure fandoms for inclusion in the Yuletide Fic Exchange, ranging from Mad Men to Jane Austen's Persuasion. It all depends on what you'd like to read and yourself!

So please take part and nominate Little Women for the fic exchange, if you have the time. I would love seeing it become a part of the fic exchange this year.

It took me forever and a day to update this, thanks to school, work and a very persnickety sex scene that truly tested the sturdiness of Laurie's piano... but finally, I'm done with the second part of Tempo and Rhythm. Potix, I hope you don't mind waiting so long for this bit! And Elizabeth, thank you for helping me out with this piece as always! In any case, I do hope people enjoy this bit o' smut and play. I hope it's a nice way to exorcise some of the dullness of the fall season. ;)

As always, reviews are much loved. Please do let me know if you've read and enjoyed this, or thought of ways to improve it!

Title: Tempo and Rhythm, Part 2/3
Fandom: Little Women
Series: Tempo and Rhythm
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie
Rating: NC-17 for Explicit Sex; R-Rated Version at Fanfiction.net
Summary: Jo, Laurie and a piano. You may as well commence with the writhing...

Note: This is a Little Women fic that contains on-screen sex in the second chapter. Readers are warned for explicitness and rough (though thoroughly consensual) play. It also can be read as a follow-up to the universe of the Night to Remember and 20 Different Ways series, which depict a marriage and partnership between Jo and Laurie. Those fics do not need to be read to understand this one, however.

( But no matter how well Jo argued against it, Laurie knew he had truly loved the young girl he had known only by the energetic shadow she cast in front of his eyes, even before he saw her fully. Even then, before he knew her name or her eyes or the radiance of her smile, he had known that he loved that girl, that he wanted to be with her, that she might well be the happy home and the loving family he had lost to fever in Italy. )

It's been a terrible while since I've updated this series that I nearly forgot about it entirely. But thanks to some terrific inspiration from Elizabeth Harker, Dream's Sister and Idle Writer of Crack, I remembered that I actually do have a series about Jo and Laurie's married life that I ought to update periodically! In any case, thanks goes to all the people still following this series. It's taking longer to write than I'd hoped (damn you, graduate school!), but I hope the pay-off is worth it.

Do remember that this series is more often updated on its fanfiction.net home, so that's the place to go to for more frequently updates. I only put it up in blocks of 5 chapters each, to avoid spamming my livejournal. But in any case, I do hope you enjoy reading!

Comments, question and constructive criticism are, as always, much appreciated. ♥

Title: 20 Different Ways to Leap Through the Minuet, Chapters 6-10 (Out of 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.

( He has to pause, half out of fear and half out of admiration. 'I've always admired that creative mind of yours, dear. Only, not so much in this instance.' )

I'm writing an advice column where Jo and Laurie get to dispense questionable pearls of wisdom while remaining their very... ah... interesting selves right here. If you liked reading it, please do leave a few more questions for them to answer and give me more material to work with. It's stupidly easy for me to write this even when I'm being crushed by work, and it's a fun creative outlet for me!

Also, I'm moving this Saturday and internet access is going to be very, very sporadic for the next few weeks. I might be scarce but I hope I'll get back to everyone eventually!

This little mini-series is written for my friend Potix who, besides being thoroughly awesome and a wonderful reader, also is a graphical genius who is very, very generous in making all sorts of banners and icons for me. She wanted to see Jo and Laurie have a hell of a lot of fun after a bit of playful arguing and by God... she's going to get it. And on a piano as well, just because I feel Jo and Laurie are awesome enough together to attempt it. I hope you enjoy this, dear heart! ♥

Additional thanks go to Ed, Saf and Elizabeth for helping with the smoothing out of various details (especially concerning the relative sturdiness of a grand piano) and much love also goes to MichelleK, whose 30 Rock fic (titled And You're Better Than Jeff and Maury) first gave me the idea for piano sex and talking about talent. Thank you for giving me permission to follow up on your brilliant idea!

And as always, reviews are much loved. Please do let me know if you've read and enjoyed this, or thought of ways to improve it!

Title: Tempo and Rhythm, Part 1/3
Fandom: Little Women
Series: Tempo and Rhythm
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie
Rating: R for Sexually Explicit Talk In This Chapter
Summary: Jo, Laurie and a piano. You may as well commence with the writhing...

Note: This is a Little Women fic that contains on-screen sex in the second chapter. Readers are warned for explicitness and rough (though thoroughly consensual) play. It also can be read as a follow-up to the universe of the Night to Remember and 20 Different Ways series, which depict a marriage and partnership between Jo and Laurie. Those fics do not need to be read to understand this one, however.

( He didn't know why either, especially given the fact that his own voice had gone out. But before she could talk herself out of the brilliant idea that she'd introduced-- Laurie had always known she was a marvel but this took the walk by a couple thousand feet-- he rose from his bench, took her to him by the curve of her hips, and showed her precisely how brilliant he thought she could be. )

This weekend, I had originally planned to put up the final chapter of A Night to Remember and let poor Laurie (after waiting approximately 3,283 weeks) consummate his marriage with Jo at last. Unfortunately, it seems as though most of the Little Women fandom is on vacation right now and since it would break my heart to finish my first LW series and have very few people read, I'm shelving ANTR for a few more weeks. Hopefully, everyone will be back in September and it'll be up then!

But in the meantime, I wanted to put up a snippet of the Dark Scribe Begins series. I actually wrote this as a lead-in to a NC-17 rated one-shot for my friend Potix that featured more bondage than you can shake Bat!Laurie's stick at. Unfortunately, that one-shot never really came together... but I liked the beginning enough to post as-is. Think of this as a hint of how Jo's future with Bat!Laurie will proceed. ;)

Title: Dark Scribe Begins, Interlude 1
Fandom: Little Women & Batman Begins/Dark Knight
Series: Dark Scribe Begins
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Bat!Laurie
Rating: R for Sexually Explicit Talk
Summary: It would all begin with a message hastily sent through her kitchen window on an otherwise unremarkable morning. But after a certain gentleman of a darker persuasion moves back into her city, Jo March's life gets all the more dangerous from there...
Note: This is a Little Women/Batman Begins crossover, with all the madness that entails. Jo March takes the place of Rachel Dawes, with Theodore "Laurie" Laurence standing in for Bruce Wayne. This is so AU, I almost don't even need to mention it.

( As the Dark Knight himself had pointed out, one never knew who could be watching. And the more they thought Jo easily neutralized through blackmail later, the better off they both were. So Jo smiled again, lifted her eyebrows up at him, and murmured words that would have made her Marmee disown her if she saw what her darling daughter now doing. )

If you're on a roll with the lunacy, I suppose it's natural to keep on continuing. And without further ado, here comes a new chapter of Falling Up. I blame my brilliant co-writer Madwomanpoems for this, chiefly!

And as always, comments, constructive criticism and questions are always loved and appreciated. We love and work for feedback! We're kind of whorey that way, honestly. ;)

Title: Falling Up, Chapter 2
Fandom: Little Women & Newsies Crossover
Series: Falling Up
Co-writer: Madwomanpoems / Captivatedbythesky
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Jo, Jo/Laurie, Laurie/Amy, Cast of Both Series
Rating: R
Summary: When Jo March flees to New York to escape an old friend's betrayal, she never thought she'd end up meeting his exact double. But then, Jack Kelly didn't exactly know what he was getting into when he met her either... Jo/Jack, Jo/Laurie, Laurie/Amy.
Note: This is a Little Women/Newsies crossover, with all the madness that entails. Remember that Christian Bale played both Laurie (in Little Women) and Jack Kelly (in Newsies) and it makes marginally more sense.

( Jack was a very nice man indeed, although Jo was currently refusing to allow herself to believe anything more could be at work. Surely this poor man was merely afraid that if he let the the twitchy psychotic who had just assaulted him waltz out of his sight, she'd probably go and threaten to dangle school children from a pier, or whatever. It was probably him attempting to look out for the public that made him call after her with such a surprising offer. )

I'm trying to work on this series a little more quickly-- thus the reason that chapter 3 is up so soon after chapter 2. It's a little shorter than the previous chapter but by god, we finally introduce more of the starring cast... including not one but two gentlemen who influence the story line for many arcs to come. If you're following this series, you can probably guess who I'm speaking of!

In any case, thanks again for reading and please do leave me a review if you're following the series. Special love goes to Ed and Elizabeth for helping me get over the hump of this chapter. You two are irreplaceable! And extra, extra love goes to Potix, who made me the bloody gorgeous banner for this fic. Thank you so much! ♥

Title: Dark Scribe Begins, Chapter 3
Fandom: Little Women & Batman Begins/Dark Knight
Series: Dark Scribe Begins
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Amy, Fred, Cast
Rating: R
Summary: It would all begin with a message hastily sent through her kitchen window on an otherwise unremarkable morning. But after a certain gentleman of a darker persuasion moves back into her city, Jo March's life gets all the more dangerous from there...
Note: This is a Little Women/Batman Begins crossover, with all the madness that entails. Jo March takes the place of Rachel Dawes, with Theodore "Laurie" Laurence standing in for Bruce Wayne. This is so AU, I almost don't even need to mention it.

( Fred was nowhere to be seen but as Jo waited in the halls impatiently in the falls for him and turned her head at the sound of wild burst of laughter from the ballroom just beyond, she could see that someone else was... )

A good friend of mine, equinox_blue, recently made my day by writing me a wonderful Jo/Laurie ficlet called Out of, Right In, Place, which I really would recommend checking out since it's achingly beautiful. It's a little under a thousand words but somehow, she manages to make these two crazy kids charming, tender, heart-breaking and utterly, utterly lovable as they finally find their way to each other. Thanks you once again for writing it for me, dear heart!

Also, if you haven't read it already, you should definitely be reading Elisabeth Harker's brilliant Jo/Laurie series Braver Than We Are. She somehow manages to write vampires into the Little Women verse... and make it suspenseful and thrilling and painful and utterly, completely believable. If you liked the wildness of Bat!Laurie, you should most definitely give her terrific fic a chance.

My friend Ablusteryday is also translating my Jo/Laurie one-shot Close Quarters into French-- making it En Toute Proximite! She makes me feel so continental. ;)

Additionally, I started a fanfiction.net archive for all the Jo/Laurie fics on the site called Bewitchingly Impossible. We have over 100 fics there so if you ever want more J/L goodness, you now know where to go.

Lastly, can I take a second to moan about my stuuuuuupid decision to write Jo and Laurie's wedding night for this godawful series?

( Read more... )

Also, does anyone have AIM/MSN Messenger and want to RP out a pivotal scene from Dark Scribe Begins with me? I need a little push to finish chapter 4 (since chapter 3 is almost done) and I could use the help!

All right. It's official. You see, I have a problem.

Somehow, even though I've spent a little over six months in the Little Women fandom, I seem to have become committed to writing the strangest crossovers in it imaginable, if only because I keep watching movies with Christian Bale and thinking... 'gee, what would Jo March do if she was in that situation? How much ass could she kick, exactly?'

It was probably outlandish enough when it dragged me into writing a Little Women/Batman Begins crossover, of all things. But now, thanks as well to the brilliant madness of my co-writer Madwomanpoems (also known as Captivatedbythesky on fanfiction.net), I also somehow ended up working on a fic that crossed over Little Women with the Newsies. (A musical starring Christian Bale which must be seen to be believed. Look it up on youtube for free if you don't believe me!)

And it all came about because we wondered what would happen if, instead of settling down with the incredibly boring, if sweet, Professor Bhaer, Jo had decided to go back to New York after getting her heart torn in half by her new brother-in-law Laurie... and then gone on to meet his exact double, a certain former newspaper merchant by the name of Jack Kelly.

And then saw the sparks start flying.

And then, alight with this new vision, we ended up writing the first chapter to the story. Here's to hoping you enjoy the fruit of our labors presently. ;)

Title: Falling Up, Chapter 1
Fandom: Little Women & Newsies Crossover
Series: Falling Up
Co-writer: Madwomanpoems / Captivatedbythesky
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Jo, Jo/Laurie, Laurie/Amy, Cast of Both Series
Rating: R
Summary: When Jo March flees to New York to escape an old friend's betrayal, she never thought she'd end up meeting his exact double. But then, Jack Kelly didn't exactly know what he was getting into when he met her either... Jo/Jack, Jo/Laurie, Laurie/Amy.
Note: This is a Little Women/Newsies crossover, with all the madness that entails. Remember that Christian Bale played both Laurie (in LW) and Jack Kelly (in Newsies) and it makes marginally more sense.

( No, his editor had gone and made sure Jack was spending what would have otherwise been a very pleasant Saturday morning napping or catching up with friends into a morning where he had to interview some hoity-toity old lady spinster about some book she'd written about her childhood-- Little Ladies or Midget Women or whatever. Like Jack really gave a damn about a happy, idyllic childhood in some happy, idyllic life spent frolicking in the woods with a happy, idyllic family. )

It took a few months to finally release this but I'm finally finished with the second chapter of Dark Scribe and ready to get to work on this series in earnest now that A Night to Remember is almost done! In any case, though this chapter is a little slower than the first one, I had a great deal of fun laying out more of the hopeless backdrop of gritty New York City... as well as getting to write a kick-ass Amy that won't be a submissive little pod-person wife to nobody, ya hear? Because really, who didn't like Amy more when she actually had a personality as a young kid, before having all her roughest and most interesting edges shorn off so she could enter a bland marriage with Laurie? ;)

In any case, I hope you continue to enjoy the Strangest Crossover of All Time. And please review if you read this part! Reviews really motivate me to keep working on this series, which can sometimes get very annoying to plot indeed.

Also, much love to Ed and Elisabeth for helping me with this part. You two are my twin angels of plotting. ♥

Title: Dark Scribe Begins, Chapter 2
Fandom: Little Women & Batman Begins/Dark Knight
Series: Dark Scribe Begins
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Amy, Fred, Cast
Rating: R
Summary: It would all begin with a message hastily sent through her kitchen window on an otherwise unremarkable morning. But after a certain gentleman of a darker persuasion moves back into her city, Jo March's life gets all the more dangerous from there...
Note: This is a Little Women/Batman Begins crossover, with all the madness that entails. This is so AU, I almost don't even need to mention it.

( Amy simply smiled primly at that, as though she had been doing something more along the lines of showing a prospective buyer her art than torturing her sister into compliance through the most devious, if gentle-womanly, of means. 'Really? Why Jo, how kind of you to say so. I knew you'd speak sense eventually.' )

A one shot for my lovely beta-in-chief, Elisabeth Harker, with lots of thanks to the terrific elizabethisboss for her help in reviewing and editing this beast! This one-shot, which initially was only meant to be a short snippet of Jo and Laurie being trapped in a short-enclosed space together, simply grew and grew, until it encompassed practically a tiny novella. (Over 7,000 words! Gah, crazy.) Ah well... them's the break. And if enough people hold a fancy and I get interested in continuing, it may or may not have a follow-up. But for now, I can promise nothing!

Thanks again for all your help and devotion to the cause, my dear Eliza. I hope you enjoy your story! And once more, I love and thrive off of reviews, questions and concrit. I'm currently trying not to be seduced away by the Demon's Lexicon fandom and, er, think of it as reinforcement for keeping me here. ;)

Title: Close Quarters
Fandom: Little Women
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Cast
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Jo. Laurie. Trapped in a very small larder. Surely nothing good could come out of their circumstances currently... One-shot, complete.

( 'Please tell me,' Jo gritted out as Laurie's face hung perilously close to hers and she got a far closer look at his chin than she had ever thought possible, 'that the sound of the door slamming shut didn't mean what I think it means.' )

All right, time for a little bit of fic reorganization. Instead of putting every short chapter of this long-running series up on my livejournal, I've decided to update this periodically on my fanfiction.net account and post up every 5 entries into LJ, if only to avoid spamming the bound_to_befall comm more than I already have! (Ah, mod, let me know if you want me to make myself scarcer...)

In any case, here are the first five chapters of the fic. They're all fairly short and about the size of a 'regular' fic chapter in any of my other series, so they shouldn't be too much to hack through if you wanted to try doing so in one go. In any case, I hope you enjoy the series and, as always, I would love to receive comments, questions and constructive criticism. Please feed my writerly ego if you liked reading this! It leads to more fic. ;)

Title: 20 Different Ways to Leap Through the Minuet, Chapters 1-5 (Out of 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.

( 'Maybe you were-- ah-- sleep shaving,' sputters Jo, giving the least convincing explanation he had heard from a woman since Eve had tired to justify biting into an apple by talking up the health benefits of fresh vegetation.  )

Written mostly because I wanted to toy around with a canonical one-shot that features a very unhappy Laurie. I'm simply playing around with characterization so if you enjoyed this version of him, please let me know. Fic about Laurie being a right bastard in Europe over Jo might very well be forthcoming. ;)

Title: Only Of You and Me
Fandom: Little Women
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie
Rating: R
Summary: A life never lived is not a life never dreamed.

( She has never looked at him this way before until now. As though he were all she wants beyond the edge of anything. )

Sorry for not updating this series for an entire month, especially given the way the last chapter left off! I've been really busy with the end of the spring school semester but now that it's summer, I'm looking forward to finally wrapping up this series which is-- egads-- over 30,000 words already. That's a lot of words to spill on one deflowering so after this and chapter 6, this mini-series will be wrapped up completely.

Thanks once again to all the lovely, lovely readers who have reviewed and told me what did and didn't work for them in the series-- I truly wouldn't have stuck to writing it if it weren't for you all. ♥ And special thanks to the wonderful Elisabeth Harker. She beta'd this tenaciously and made Laurie a great deal more in-character than he'd previously been. Thanks again, lovely!

Title: A Night To Remember, Chapter 5
Fandom: Little Women
Series: A Night to Remember
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Amy, Fred, Cast
Rating: Hard R this chapter, NC-17 later
Summary: With a wedding day comes a wedding night. But who on earth could have predicted that Jo and Laurie's one could have proceeded quite *this* madly? Jo/Laurie and a night that they'll remember for the rest of their lives... no matter what they might try to erase from memory. Slight AU, strong sexual content.

( 'Not... so much,' she admitted, her lips thin with courage. 'But there's some ribbons in my vanity drawer if we need them. I'm assuming you'll tie me and then have your... your way with... me...?' )

Good lord, I can even now hear my generous readers cry. What is this wittering mad woman doing starting another series for the Little Women fandom when she's got two already, one (A Night to Remember) nearing completion? Well, it's pretty much summer for me, which means that I've finally got time on my side to write and write as much as I please. And since I dearly love Jo/Laurie and am rather put-out when people argue that they'd be disastrous in a marriage together because they argue a lot (because marriages must be completely frictionless to be considered decent?), I wanted to start a new series of drabbles and short stories to write about how Jo and Laurie's married life could have gone on, adventures, arguments, child-births, and creative differences included.

There's not too much married!J/L fic out there (although the excellent Rese has some great pieces-- I especially love her 'Fumbling in their Passion') so I thought it would be nice to trace how their life together could have gone from beginning to very end. And although I have twenty snippets planned out, only about 15 of the snippets have definite plans. If you have any ideas for what could be included in this fic, please let me know about them! I could really use the help.

(Incidentally, I also wrote Chapter 7 of the round-robin fic Rigmarole, beta'd by the amazing Black Magic Woman. If you're interested in seeing Jo and Laurie come to an understanding about marriage without having either of their hearts broken completely, you might want to check it out. ♥)

So without further ado... let's get to the story already. This has been a very weighty introduction to a tiny beginning fic!

Title: 20 Different Ways to Leap Through the Minuet, Part 1/20
Fandom: Little Women
Series: 20 Different Ways to Leap Through the Minuet
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Cast
Rating: K+, Later 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.

( In his dreams, they dance and keep on dancing, together until the end. )

This will, sadly, likely be the last time I update this fic until the summer releases me from the burdens of schooling. But at the least, I finally, finally got to write some smut and got comfortable with Laurie's POV. It's odd-- it's as though the character suddenly started talking right into my ear and wouldn't shut up until I had finished off this chapter for spring break. It's almost as though he was willing to nag and nag until I let him do as he pleased... ;)

In any case, thanks again for all the lovely, lovely constructive reviews for chapter 3. They helped a ridiculous amount in fashioning my characterization for Laurie! Special thanks have to go to Dream's Sister, whose beautiful missives on Laurie helped with my break-through, and Elisabeth Harker, who actually helped me roleplay this and the follow chapter. Some of Jo's dialog comes straight from her mind and if you aren't reading her new fic, Braver Than We Are, you're missing out!

Thanks again and please drop a review if you liked the chapter. It really thrills me as both a writer and fangirl of the series. ;)

Title: A Night To Remember, Chapter 4
Fandom: Little Women
Series: A Night to Remember
Characters/Pairings: Jo/Laurie, Amy, Fred, Cast
Rating: Hard R This Chapter, 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: The long-promised sex finally rears its head in this chapter, albeit not all that explicitly as of yet. Beware delicate sensibilities!

( So instead of launching into raptures about what the light did to her collarbones or the reflections of her avian eyes, Laurie simply leaned against the door, put his sauciest grin forward, and tried not to let the sudden pooling of desire between his stomach and his spine take over the evening.  )