Work Text:
Jo decides where they’ll go on their honeymoon.
Friedrich had suggested Germany, and her eyes had brightened at the idea, but she plots the rest of their travel like a pirate seeking his treasure. She had given up Europe with great bitterness but also great heroism; Amy had her turn for sophistication and now it would be Jo’s chance to grow and sophisticate herself among the intelligencia.
They will go across the continent and beyond Germany, of course – to Italy, to France, perhaps all the way to England. Her enthusiasm is contagious.
Friedrich allows himself to be infected.
**
Jo immediately gets her sea legs and finds herself leaning over the prow, inhaling the warm sea air as if she could transform herself particle by particle into a mermaid. Friedrich – to his embarrassment – is seasick for the first three days.
“It’s not as if you were ever a sailor,” she tells him, bringing him cups of cooled wine and bits of bread from the larder. He groans his embarrassment.
“Ach,” he remarks. “I was never a sailor, Jo.” She knows, without him saying so, that he has lived inside of his own head for a very long time, and that alone explains why he’s been so nauseated by the trip.
“I wish I could make you Hannah’s ginger brew, but even if we were on land I was always all thumbs about it,” she confesses.
“I’ll lie still until it goes away. Assuming it goes away.” He sighs, wraps his arm around her waist. Jo laces her fingers with his. “Do you suppose this is how Plutarch felt about the romance of the sea?”
“Did he get sick every time the boat bounced as well?” Jo asked.
Friedrich laughed – very carefully – at her joke.
**
It is beautiful in Germany, of course. Jo doesn’t expect it to be anything less than gorgeous wherever she goes with Friedrich. He has managed to gain his sea legs before they landed, and now they’re on the docks. Freidrich’s cousin is unreserved as she races up to them and throws her arms around his neck, making excited sounds, then exclaiming her joy in a rapid run of Germanic phrases. For once, Jo sticks behind and lets the siblings celebrate. The air rang with joy, and she felt her heart leap and gladden. It was the sort of joy her own family would spread about – the sort of happiness they would partake in, upon reuniting at last after a long trip.
All at once, she was being embraced by strong arms, praising her character and spirit and expressing pride over who she was – how she had managed to drag her cousin to a happy marriage, and inquiring about Franz and Emil. Jo feels a bit guilty that they left the boys behind and in the capable care of her mother, but there they’ll have like companionship with their cousins and Marmee’s careful attention there. Besides, as her mother had blushingly told her – it was important for Jo and her husband to have plenty of time alone.
Not that the ship had cooperated with them in that respect, Jo thought, with a touch of amusement.
***
France was prenaturally bright, glowing with candles and lamps. Jo thought of it as an unattainably fancy place – the location where her sister had settled down to absorb art, then fallen in love with her rejected Teddy – but actually standing in those streets. Jo felt herself quite sophisticated as she took Friedrich’s hand and together they managed to move together among the crowds. She thought to herself she would write of this later – her heroine, based upon herself, holding a dashing rebellious professor’s hand.
The food was delicious, of course. Not as sweet as Friedrich’s kiss, but quite good.
**
England was another level of propriety from the professor’s wives that Friedrich knew and their maternal scoldings. Jo thought herself well-prepared from Marmee’s teachings, even from the elder Josephine’s instruction, but she had no way to quite explain how being in England made her feel. It was as if she tasted tea everywhere, and as if everything in the world was some gorgeous world of queenly elegance. Jo felt out of place. She would be so much happier climbing a tree in the autumn fields of her family home.
But then there was Friedrich beside her, holding her up. He helped her face down his professor friends, whom she knew to stare at with enormous confidence. “They really aren’t much to fear,” he said dryly. “They’ll be so busy talking on and on about their own importance that they won’t have any reason to conscious your own reaction to them.”
Jo, however, stopped being scared when she was in the parlor with them. She would not retire to the women’s rooms for tea and gossip. Instead, she stood with her head held high, and shot back at their presumptions – even at their request that she remove herself and busy herself with distaff matters.
The night was lively and filled with philosophical discussions. Jo was sad to see it go, and it was near midnight when they set off to return to their hotel. “I would not call them the weaker sex after this night,” remarked an old mentor of Friedrich’s, as they left out the back door. Later, Friedrich kissed the back of Jo’s neck and informed her she was perfect in every single respect.
***
While Friedrich’s stomach was much calmer on the voyage home, Jo’s was stirred up something fierce. He did find her ginger water and brought it to her, and she drank it with some relief.
“Do you think it was the haggis?” he asked her.
“No,” she said. Jo barely kept herself from smiling, her hand resting upon her belly. They had been gone for a long month, the world had been changed several times over – their passion proven to each other in a hundred different beds across the continent. She wondered how long it would take her brilliant professor to recognize what morning sickness looked like, but she didn’t betray her secrets an inch.
“I suppose I’ll regain my legs soon enough,” she said, yawning and making room for him in their bunk. Friedrich hummed, wrapped his arm around her. She sighed her happiness. The sea welcomed them home to America, sighing in bliss against the side of the boat.