"Friedrich!"

He looks up from his papers, smiling a little; two weeks of their dating has still not, she knows, quite made him indifferent to the sound of his name on her lips. (She admits that she's used this knowledge to her own advantage on occasion.)

"Yes, mein Jo?"

She looks away briefly from her laptop, pink now. (Two weeks has definitely not accustomed her to being 'mein Jo.')

"I-I need you to come look at this scene. Tell me if it's alright. God knows I don't want it to even resemble the garbage I was writing before."

He chuckles, getting up and leaning over her shoulder as he carefully reads through the page, nodding occasionally.

"Ach—so. So. Yes, better, much better. This sentence here—my heart is full for you—this is true. Good. I am swept off my feet reading it."

She laughs, leaning back to smile up at him.

"Well, good. I'm glad I've improved in romance; I've had a good model to base my characters off of."

He chuckles, reddening behind his beard.

"Ah—Jo, I haf fear that if you base them off of me, you'll not sell a single book."

Then, as he scans the next page—

"Ah! Experience has done you well. The kiss scene is better—much."

She just grins at him.

"Like I said, Professor—I've had a good teacher."

Flushing deeper (one of his hands is rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly), he reads further and then frowns.

"No—no, it is all good, but not this. It is not so."

She turns back to the screen.

"What's not so?"

He points.

"This—the after-the-kiss scene. No, I cannot agree. Look—who is so calm after such a kiss? You haf made the heroine something like an icicle here."

"But I was just trying," she protests, "to—you know—to leave out that garbage about the heaving bosoms and the breathless sighs and all that…"

"Good," he nods. "That is right—that is true. But you haf not to go so far the other side. Come—I will show you."

And he leans down and catches her mouth in his, ignoring her laughing protests—Friedrich, I'm trying to work!—and not leaving off until he's thoroughly made his point.

-88888-

Meg, when she hears, is beyond insufferable.

"I knew it," she say, smiling over the dinner pot. Jo rolls her eyes.

"You did not! You made one silly, suggestive joke—and you do that every time I so much as talk to a man."

But Meg, bent over her soup, is not to be swayed from her victory.

"I knew it. It was in your eyes, Jo—a woman knows these things."

"What does a woman know, Meggers?" says John gaily, bending to kiss his wife on the cheek. Meg smiles up at him for a half moment, and Jo looks away, wrinkling her nose. (Meg and John are sometimes gag-worthy just looking at each other.)

"Only that Jo and that Professor are going to get married someday."

Jo turns nearly the color of the tomato Meg's dicing.

"MEG!"

"What? You are," says Meg serenely. "I can tell."

John laughs, tugging lightly at Meg's ponytail.

"Oh, you'll never change her mind, Jo—once she's set on something, that's that. It was like that when she wanted to marry me, you know."

Meg snorts.

"Hardly. I don't think it was ME that hung around the house so often that Marmee wanted to open up the spare bedroom for you."

Laughing, John makes some reply—but Jo's bounding out of the kitchen and into the den to romp with Daisy and Demi before he can.

Her knowledge of romance, after all, has expanded exponentially—but a body does have its limits.

AN: That's all, hope you enjoyed! Please please review with any kind of comment-it can only help me get better. :)