I lay on my back on a bunk in a secluded room at our Hagueneau OP, raising my shirt and slipping my trousers down slightly so that my best friend and Easy Company medic Eugene Roe could examine a wound on my hip that had become increasingly painful since we'd arrived. It had happened a few weeks prior, during the shelling that took out Toye and Guarnere and, in the surrounding chaos of trying to get them stabilized, I hadn't mentioned anything. I assumed the wound was minor and would heal on its own, but by the time we got to Hagueneau it was clear that something was seriously off. I did my best to cover it up as soreness and fatigue, but Gene could tell something else was wrong and finally called me on it.

"Alright. Enough. Something is wrong with you and I want to know what it is."

"What are you talking about, Gene?" I tried to feign confusion, but he grabbed my arm and half-dragged me into the room, shutting a door behind him.

"Do not bullshit me right now, Kasia. You're in pain. What's wrong with your leg?"

"Nothing!" I tried to insist, but he narrowed his eyes at me and reached out to grab my hip, causing me to yelp in agony.

"That's it! Lay down on that bunk. Right now, Kasia!" he ordered, leaving the room for a moment to grab his supplies. I balked at his tone, and I was still standing, arms crossed against my chest when he returned to the room. His voice grew stern and chillingly calm. "This is not open for discussion. Do it. Now."

Seeing the stern look in his eyes let me know that he was leaving no room for argument. I lay down on the bunk and exposed my wound, preparing myself for the lecture I knew was to come. When he turned, I heard him suck in a sharp breath and looked up to see him staring in horror at my exposed hip.

"When did that happen?"

"The day Bill and Joe got hurt."

Clearly this was not what he wanted to hear. He all but exploded.

"What the hell do you mean? Are you serious? How could you hide this from me that long? Dammit, Kasia!"

"It's not that bad."

"Not that bad? Not that bad went out the window a couple of weeks ago! No wonder you're running fever and looking so pale! Limping around here like nobody is going to notice! It's infected! You trying to lose your damned leg? Or die?"

He continued mumbling under his breath as he worked, and I was sure that I didn't really want to hear what he was saying. Finally satisfied that he had cleaned it as best he could, he dressed the wound and ordered me to allow him to check on it at least twice a day until it healed. His tone was infuriating, and I snapped at him as I stood back up.

"You know, I didn't get hit on purpose! You don't have to talk to me like a child, Gene."

He threw the bloodied dressings he'd been using to clean my wound across the room, his voice raised to match my own.

"Apparently I do! If you're going to insist on being stubborn like one, then I'm going to treat you like one! I just can't believe you would do something so…"

I was no longer listening. I turned my back on him and walked out of the room, hurt and angry. Eventually I found myself curled up in my bunk like, ironically, a child. Days passed. I went, as instructed, to Gene for treatment twice a day, mostly because he'd made sure to tell Joe, Don, and Bull what I had done. They threatened to carry me if I refused to walk myself, or worse, to tell the brass. And, every day, twice a day, Gene would dutifully treat me. We didn't make eye contact. We didn't speak. Everyone noticed the change, but no one was brave enough to say anything.

Finally, one day I tried. "Gene, it wasn't that bad. I just…" That was as far as I got before he cut me off sharply.

"Just stop. I don't want to hear it."

And so it went. A few days became a couple of weeks and we were moving out again, coming off the line at last after a patrol that got Eugene Jackson killed, and Winters helping us to narrowly avoid a repeat performance. My hip was finally free from infection and healing well under Gene's care, which was still tender despite the friction between us.

The truck bounced into Landsberg, Germany and I looked up to see that he was watching me, although he quickly looked away when my eyes met his. We unloaded and set about preparing our perimeter and making our sleeping quarters relatively comfortable. Compared to the frozen hell of the Belgian woods, Germany was turning out to be a dream, but I was having trouble enjoying our newfound perks. I knew that he was angry with me, and I understood why. I just hadn't expected it to last this long. I hadn't gone more than a day without talking to him in 3 years. I missed my best friend.

Once we were settled, I went down to Gene's little aid room so that he could check my dressings. He stood with his back to me, not even acknowledging as I walked in. I closed the door and exposed the wound, removing my shirt and trousers and laying across the bunk in silence as I had done so many times over the last couple of weeks. Wordlessly, he turned and began to work, and I turned my head away from him to hide a tear slipping down my cheek.

"Does that hurt?"

The sound of his voice, so familiar to my heart, had been absent from my ears so long that it surprised me a bit and I turned to look at him. His eyes were fixed on the dressings that he was carefully removing from my skin.

"No. Why? Does it look bad again?"

"No. Actually, it looks really good. Closed up well. But you were crying, so I thought maybe it was sore."

"Oh. No. I'm okay."

"Well, stand up right here in front of me so that I can make sure it really is closed up before I decide to leave it uncovered. I don't want it opening up again."

I stood up from the bunk, just in front of the chair he was sitting in, bending and twisting as he instructed, checking my range of motion and the healing of the wound. I was happy for the distraction. His soft breath was blowing across the skin of my stomach, and his hands held me at my hips as he studied the wound that had now become a scar.

"It looks good. I think we can leave it uncovered now, but I want to keep up with cleaning it every day for a little while longer, just to make sure. And if it gets irritated or opens back up, you come tell me immediately. You hear me?"

"Yes," I agreed quietly, and he looked up into my eyes to make sure that I was serious. Another tear slipped out and he started to ask again if something was hurting. "I'm okay, Gene. Really."

I started to move away, but he didn't release his grip on me, sighing before speaking again.

"Do you even know why I was so mad at you? It wasn't just because you got wounded or because you didn't tell me right away. Or even that you could have needed amputation. That infection could have killed you. You would have been dead, and I would have to live with the fact that I didn't take care of you." He paused a moment and broke eye contact. When he continued, his voice was softer, shaken with emotion. "I would have had to live without you."

I reached up instinctively and ran my fingers through his hair. He leaned his forehead against my stomach, wrapping his arms around my waist. We stayed that way for a few minutes before I finally found my voice again.

"I just didn't want to bother you with it. I should have known better, and I'm sorry. But I'm tired of you being mad and not talking to me. I miss you."

He looked up at me again and this time, his eyes were soft as he told me that he missed me too. My fingers slipped soothingly through his hair, and his gaze flicked back down to the scar left behind on my hip. He ran his thumb across it and when I shivered his eyes met mine again, watching my responses to his touch.

I was mesmerized, watching as he brushed the pad of his finger across the damaged skin before leaning into me and pressing his lips against it instead. I could feel the warmth of his lips and the softness of his eyelashes, and my eyes fluttered closed. His arms tightened around my waist as he placed soft kisses against my hip, my stomach, and my ribs. My breath was coming in shallow gasps, my nerves tingling with awareness of his every move.

I felt him stand, still holding me at my waist, and looked up into his eyes again. There was a fire in them that I'd never seen before. One hand brushed along my cheek and down my jawline, fingers finding their place in my hair. We were moving closer, but it seemed to happen so slowly that I almost didn't notice until his lips touched my cheek.

I released the breath I hadn't realized I was holding, whispering his name as the next kiss came at the corner of my mouth. It felt like I'd been hurtled back through time. I saw the first moment I'd met him at Toccoa, his gaze holding unspoken doubt as he appraised the slight, shy young woman standing in front of him. Something in his eyes had intrigued me, so I sat down next to him for chow and started a conversation. We'd been inseparable from that moment on, save for the Normandy jump, when it took us days to find each other again. When I had finally reached the assembly area and walked into the busy aid station, he hugged me so tight that I could feel his heart pounding against his ribcage. I saw his smile as we worked our way through the streets of Eindhoven. I felt his warmth as he held me close in the foxholes of the Bois Jacques, and the tenderness with which he had taken care of me, even despite his anger.

My hands slid up his chest and behind his neck, holding on for dear life as my best friend's lips finally met my own. What a strange feeling to realize that you've been falling in love with someone for three years, but you have been too busy to notice. I surrendered completely to the kiss, his tongue brushing mine so that we both released a soft moan.

Breathless, he pulled back slightly, touching his forehead to mine, and whispered, "I love you."

"I love you."

He crashed his lips to mine again, this kiss more demanding and full of words that had been left unspoken for far too long. His hands ran possessively over me, and then I felt him pull away and heard the sound of fabric moving. When the touch of his fingers returned, it was accompanied by a new sensation… his bare chest against my undergarment-clad body. I was lost in him.

When awareness flooded back in, I was laid across the bunk. Gene was looking down at me, propped up on one arm and running his thumb across my cheek, watching me to make sure that I was still with him. I noticed that my undergarments were missing when his tongue ran along my collarbone and across my chest, teasing the flesh stiff where my brassiere had once been as his arousal pressed against my center. At the feeling of his nakedness, I moaned softly and, without my telling it to, one leg wrapped around his waist to pull him closer.

He asked me with his eyes and, seeing what he was looking for, kissed me again, deep and slow, allowing his tongue to draw out my own arousal even as he slipped slowly inside of me, a deep rumble of satisfaction sounding in his chest. The pain I had anticipated never came. Instead, with his mysterious, healing touch, Eugene Roe played every fiber of my being as though I was a harp and he was the master musician. He could change the pitch and the tempo whenever he desired, and he did just that, watching my face for cues as our sweat-dampened skin slipped easily against each other. Breaths were coming in short, shallow gasps now. There was a delicious friction building between us, the roaring my ears building in a slow crescendo until the stars exploded behind my eyes. His release, much like everything else about him, was quiet but intense. He buried his face in my neck, drawing deep breaths as our heartbeats finally began to slow. His weight across me was comfortable, like a warm blanket, and I held him tightly. After a few minutes, he pushed up onto his elbows and looked down at me, gently brushing a strand of hair from my face.

"Don't keep things from me anymore, belle. I love you. With all my heart, I love you. But I can't spend the rest of my life with you if you die here."