Obviously, I don't own this but as it's outside of copyright, I'm not sure if the disclaimer is still needed. Hm… At any rate, it's old enough that it's on Project Guttenberg.
He loved Amy. She was just the sort of girl he needed in life. They rarely argued and often laughed. In France he had been certain he had never truly been in love before he fell for Amy. He had never had such a good feeling before, happy and warm and bubbly all at the same time. And he always felt that way around Amy. That was love. He knew it as much as he knew the sky was blue, her hair was gold, and the sun was bright. He loved Amy and never wanted to hurt her or lose that love, not for anything.
But then there was Jo.
He thought his feelings were brotherly when he came back. Believed it actually. Believed it as she called him her boy again and hugged him and Amy equally. He was sure of it when Friedrich Bhaer first came with the desire to have her as his own. It didn't feel like a lie when he told Amy he should have light feet at Jo's wedding. But then, it was, wasn't it?
It took two years for her to get to thee alter, metaphorically speaking of course, for there was no alter, only her father. And Laurie was starting to feel something fighting its way out of the cage he'd placed it in. He put a costume on it and told himself it was protectiveness for Jo's best interests. He'd always wanted the best for Jo and this man was poor as could be and far older than her as well. And he already had two boys, even if they weren't his from another love but his nephews who he cared for deeply. She would never have the happy newlywed days Laurie and Amy had, not with two boys of eleven and nine running about. She would never go to Europe as she had dreamed. She would be so busy that she could never become a writer. Laurie assured himself that this was what his upset feelings were coming from; he wanted the best for Jo and she would not have it.
But she did have happy newlywed days, somehow. Every time he saw her she was grinning. She and that man flirted when they thought no one was looking (or rather when Jo thought no one was looking for Friedrich did not care who saw). Jo flirted! What a strange thing. Of course Jo would only use the tactics other girls employed to get a suitor and husband on the one man she had already married, the man who unashamedly gave her looks that made it clear he wouldn't be leaving her of his own free will any time soon. And she loved Franz and Emil, very closely to the way Meg loved Demi, wouldn't dream of life with her Fritz without his nephews as well. They were fast to recruit more boys to the school. She listened with no jealousy to people's tales of Europe as if marrying a European had somehow cured her of her passion to go. She didn't care any longer about becoming a writer and rarely wrote a word other than letters; most of her creative energy flowed into plays, lessons, and occasionally stories for the brood she taught and mothered.
Laurie kept up the disguise of protectiveness though for nearly the first year of her marriage until he came back from a trip he had taken for business that had held him away for two weeks. Amy told him excitedly, with Bess in her arms, that Jo and Fritz had a baby boy and both mother and son were healthy as could be. He had gone to see her as soon as he could, sooner than he would have been able to if he hadn't been married to her sister. And she had been happy to see him but hadn't been waiting. She was clinging to the child in her arms as she sat on the couch and introduced Laurie to little Rob as if he were a treasure and she hadn't the least worry of how they should deal with a child when they were poor and had loads of other boys around at all times. And Fritz was happy too, beaming more than usual at his Jo and his son.
"I thought we should name him after Fritz since he's the first son," Jo said when Friedrich had gone to help Emil who had somehow gotten caught in a tree according to his brother, "but he said he shouldn't like to create confusion by calling him Fritz or Friedrich and thought it would be awful to call him Fred or Freddie around yourself and Amy. You've had enough trouble around us March girls without Fritz and me rubbing Fred Vaughn in your face. So we decided on Robert," she said.
"Your father must be happy," Laurie told her but his mind was spinning. He knew she had told Fritz that Laurie had once been in love with her. After all, the man had thought she was engaged to him when she was in New York. But for Jo to bring it up so casually as if Laurie's "trouble around us March girls" was something she and Friedrich had discussed and laughed about like a simple youthful stumble hit him hard and by the time he got home that night, had shattered his idea of protectiveness being the name of the small monster that arose around Jo.
His final defense was that it was pride he felt in the case of Jo and Fritz and it was a harsh blow to take. Protectiveness had seemed admirable; pride was a fault. But pride was better than being in love with Jo, wasn't it? So he told himself that he was bitter that another man had won a girl who had refused him, a man Laurie thought himself better than. After all, he was richer, younger, and better looking than Friedrich Bhaer and yet Jo who had declared she might never fall in love had very much fallen for him. So Laurie set about trying to quell his pride. He had little luck.
Bhaer was a hard man to dislike, particularly by Laurie for he was a "jolly sort". He was endlessly kind, quite the scholar in his own way, always good humored, and infallibly honest. If it were pride haunting Laurie, these would be the things he would dislike about the man, the things he knew had won Fritz his wife, things that Laurie had not possessed back when he was trying to woo Jo. But they were things he liked as well and Laurie gave in to the truth just after Fritz and Jo named their second son Teddy as if it was not an awkward thing at all and to Jo it was not. To Jo, Laurie was a friend and a brother, the one who had given her the idea for turning Plumfield into a school, though Fritz was her partner in that venture as he was in everything else. Naming her son Teddy was natural and not abnormal. And Laurie finally admitted to himself that he had never fully let go of his feelings for Jo.
She never knew. How could she? Jo who was so quick to see the love affairs of everyone around her, especially the boys at Plumfield was slow to see the any admiration falling on her. After all, she had thought Laurie's love small enough to be ignored and gotten over, hadn't seen Fritz's love until she had been faced with the idea of not seeing him again and he had literally said the words "heart's dearest", and Laurie was fairly sure she had missed a boyish crush or two from her crop of boys, though those were quickly gotten over and never spoken of. Not to say at times he had been sure she knew. There were times he had been sure she was in love with him too but then he knew better because Jo in love was very different from Jo as a sister. In love Jo flirted, ran away from compliments, became bashful, and looked upon the object of her affection as if there wasn't a single flaw in his person (other than a tendency to be very hard on socks). Jo as a sister was openly affectionate but not flirty, unashamedly picked at flaws of her brother, and hated compliments but usually retorted rather than run. It wasn't the same thing, not by any stretch of the imagination. She loved Fritz and unlike Laurie, Jo was incapable of loving two people at once in such a manner, and even if she was, Laurie doubted it would be him she fell for.
Fritz on the other hand knew fairly well though he never said a word, either to Laurie or Jo. Laurie knew the man was aware of it however. A couple looks communicated that perfectly well. However absentminded the man was with his possessions (including his socks), he was not absent when it came to the goings on of the people he cared for. He never tried to keep Laurie from Jo or visa versa. He trusted Jo to the ends of the earth, regardless of whether or not he trusted Laurie on the matter. And he never hated Laurie and always treated him as kindly as he did John. Sometimes he was almost sorry like a race runner who had been in second place until his opponent tripped without his notice, allowing him to come in first. But he knew he had Jo just as much as Laurie knew that he did not.
Amy was harder to read. If she knew, she didn't want to and after all Laurie loved her too. She never alluded to it directly. But she was perceptive and she too had asked the question in her own way if 'die erst Liebe ist die beste' but she said nothing direct and never seemed to doubt his love for her. But sometimes Laurie thought he saw her cast an unwarranted look of- what was it? It was not anger or hurt or envy exactly but it was something similar- towards her older sister. But she made sure that Jo never saw it, for Jo in her blunt way would have asked what was wrong and it seemed best for everyone involved, including Amy and Fritz that Laurie's love continue to be unspoken.
But life went on and Laurie tried his best to be a good man and a faithful husband to Amy. He tried to fall out of love with Jo, always, but it never worked. He attempted to stay away from her once but that had backfired as she had grown worried, thinking something dreadful must have happened to him, Amy, or Bess and her concern if anything made him love her more. Once he had attempted to flirt almost shamelessly with her, in hopes having her reject him again would drive his love completely away but she'd thought she was joking and Fritz had taken an opportunity to sit at her other side on the couch and he'd seen Jo slide closer to her husband, almost subconsciously, affirming Fritz's calm unspoken statement of "my wife, my Jo, let it be". He tried being her friend and brother and though it didn't make the feelings go away, it didn't pain him and it didn't make them grow. So most of the time that was what he did.
Because he loved Amy. He really truly did. Put at gunpoint, he would easily declare that he was far more in love with her than he was with Jo but that was one slip, wasn't it? He loved Amy dearly. But he still loved Jo.
My first Little Women fic. I went snooping for some and found there was very little and that a lot of people seemed to be pro Laurie/Jo and I have to say I'm very much a Jo/Fritz fan but I admit Laurie/Jo has its merits and this is what comes out when I think on it. Somehow I can't see Jo not loving Fritz or loving two men at once