Freidrich Thinks

A/N: Hello, this is my 2nd romantic Jo/Bhaer oneshot…a little more risque than the first, but I wanted to try it out. Please review!

Friedrich Bhaer sat on the side of his untidy bed, with his elbows on his knees and his chin propped up on his hands, deep in thought. It was sometime well after midnight, and he knew he should lie back down and try to rest—but at the moment he was distracted, caught up with the subjects of his reverie.

Or, rather, one subject: Jo March.

Ever since he had met her, the young woman had been something of a puzzle to him. Such a—such a—paradox. Yes, that was the word the Americans would use. A paradox. So fierce and flashing and sharp, yet at the same time so soft and vulnerable…so wild and heedless, and yet, even then, so prim, with her simple clothes and her almost demure—ach, Jo March demure!—"Professors". He couldn't tell what she thought of him...and he so dearly wanted to know, wanted to know what tall, brown "Mees Marsch" thought of the messy old professor, with his knobbly coats and missing handkerchiefs and unfashionable manners. And he wondered, with a pang of something very like shame, whether she knew about how he thought of her—how when she brushed herself off after a good romp with the little ones, flushed and laughing and so very Jo, he stared at her large grey eyes and wished he could make her flush for a different reason—how when she passed him in the hall, he felt the brush of her skirts or her arm against him and shivered—how, just earlier tonight, he had done the unthinkable and dreamt of her in a way that would make his mother very ashamed of her Fritz indeed.

What exactly had happened in the dream, he didn't quite know…all he knew was that his Jo (as he had privately taken to calling her) had been there, and there was, for once, no teasing in her eyes—they had been wide and startled, and yet there had been an ache in them he'd nearly understood…

She had been saying his name in a soft, breathless tone, and in a voice which carried the same ache as her eyes she had asked him…asked him to…

He shook his head, while in the dark his cheeks set afire. Prut. He remembered little more.

Though he didn't know what had happened in the dream, he did know that it had made his entire body alarmingly hot, and nearly wrenched from him a groan he'd been keeping back for far too long…not to mention other reactions which he had realized with a guilty horror…

Friedrich Bhaer shook his head almost angrily, and his brow furrowed, while his eyes darkened.

"Ach, no, I will not haff it so," he murmured, just to himself. And then, remembering the way the fearless Miss March had trembled in his fancy, he drew in a breath, and whispered:

"Mein Gott!"

One other detail rose from his memory; in the dream, there had been no polite "Professors" from her—she had called him Friedrich, of that he was certain. Now whether she had said it, or rather moaned it, was quite unimportant…

The thought made him close his eyes, and swallow hard, jaw clenching.

"It is not for me, this love," he said, in a much sterner voice than he ever used, particularly around "Mees Marsch". "No—I spin the foolishness. Old Fritz forgets himself."

And, with a little sigh, he lay back in bed and turned off the lamp, taking that worn old photo from the bedside table and pressing it for a long time to his mouth before reluctantly putting it back and turning onto his side.

Old Fritz was all he was, nice old Professor Bhaer…yet in the dream that dear, funny mouth had said:

"Friedrich."