Chris laid on her cot with a notebook in hand as the men around her got dressed, taking full advantage of the hours before lights out as they headed to town. "You should come out with us this time," George said entering the billet she was stationed in, hoping she'd actually say yes this time – he hadn't seen her all day, he almost starting to miss her.

She turned to him and shrugged. "You should stay," she retorted. "Joe is."

George scoffed knowing Joe wasn't – he hadn't been staying on base with her lately, she kept telling him to go and he kept leaving like she said. "He's going with us."

"No I'm not," Joe said moving around George, who looked at Joe surprised – he knew Joe wanted to go, Chris knew it too. "She asked me to stay," he said answering their unspoken question as he sat down beside her.

She waited until they left before looking up at him. "I predict, in two minutes you're gonna feel like an asshole."

His brows furrowed in confused irritation. "I'm the asshole?" he asked.

With a nod she turned back to her notebook, biting back the smile she knew would give her away. "If you wanna go, you can go," she told him offhandedly making him sigh.

"You asked me to stay." It was the reason he'd stayed, because she never asked him to – he offered to stay, she'd tell him to leave, sometimes he would, but she never asked.

She shook her head as though she wasn't buying it. "You wanna go out."

"With you," he exclaimed bluntly. "I wanna go out, with, you." He'd learned months to spell it out for her if he wanted her to understand what he meant – he had to swallow his pride, give up the little modesty he had, so he could tell her exactly what he wanted. And so he was surprised when he looked down at her to see her scribbling in the notebook uncaringly. "What are you working on?" he asked slouching on the bed so he could see it. He stared confused at the little flowers littering the page; he'd expected German words, because why else would she have asked him to stay. "You haven't been assigned anything," he said dropping the notebook on the floor and turning to see her blank face as she shook her head. "So what the hell've you been doing?" he asked wondering why she'd refused to go with them for a month.

She looked over at him refusing to show anything on her face; leaving him wondering what she was doing. She realized why he loved messing with her, it was so much fun. "Well, in thirty minutes Ron's gonna come by and check on me. And then twenty minutes later Winters will start his rounds to see who's here, and we'll talk for while. Then forty minutes after that everyone else will slowly start coming back."

She dazzled him in every sense of the word; he was blinded by her – her smile, her fury, her intelligence, her drive, her simple way of showing him what she wanted. She always surprised him with what she was thinking, with what she was planning – he couldn't pin her down, and it made her exciting. "Why have you been scoping the place?"

She smiled then because he was slowly understanding what she'd done. "So I could ask you to stay," she answered softly, her mouth barely moving as she mumbled the words.

He realized then, staring at her impossibly beautiful face, that she'd spent the last month going over every detail until she had a schedule – which helped when both Speirs and Winters were punctual men. "You're flirting with me," he said making her laugh lightly.

"No," she disagreed half-heartedly, "I'm proving why you're an asshole," she said smiling as he laughed. She didn't know when or why it'd happened, but one time she'd come back from a mission and suddenly he was everything – he invaded her thoughts even when she was going over Intelligence with Nixon or Strayer, she was with Dick and his name would almost spill out of her mouth. Getting attached to a soldier in the middle of war; it was the stupidest thing she'd ever done. She was emotionally compromised, and she was consciously aware of it. That was what she thought was funniest; she knew it was wrong, she knew why too – she knew every single reason why she should distance herself from him, for both his benefit and hers. But it was too late; he was everything. "You have fifteen minutes," she told him. "You gonna sit there all night or are you gonna kiss me?"

He hesitated a moment as he looked at her, seeing a look in her eye that he only thought he'd been feeling – desire. She wanted this, him. But it was just a moment he hesitated before he grabbed her chin pulling her mouth to his – feeling the breath that left her as he relaxed completely. It was the only time he'd ever seen her vulnerable; there was no stiffness in her spine, no flickering of her eyes looking for a way to escape if it was needed. She was his. She'd do anything he wanted. Almost.

She sighed against him, her hands winding in his hair, letting him push as close to her as he could get, feeling his teeth behind his lips moving against her own. And then his mouth was trailing down her jaw, his hand moving up her side to her chest. "My answer's still no," she said softly. All the proof was in her soft voice that if he pushed her she'd give in, he knew it she knew it – and they both wanted him to. But he sighed before kissing her mouth, settling with the feel of her pressed against him; he kissed her over and over, sitting for several moments with his mouth pressed against hers catching his breath before he started kissing her again, pulling her hair loose to wrap it around his fingers. They could've carried on for days, only stopping long enough to breathe and look each other – brown eyes meeting blue ones, fire meeting ice – and they smiled gently before starting all over again.

They finally settled chest to chest, his arms around her waist and the tips of her fingers running along his jaw. They were lost in a foggy daze, the kind of drunk alcoholics drink for – every fiber in their bodies was buzzing, their minds muddled, completely relaxed, happiness with every breath.

"Are you glad you stayed?" she asked him, her voice barely a breath of moving air but they laid so close he heard her clearly.

"I mean I'd rather be home instead of in the war, but this takes second," he said making them both laugh. But he meant it; he honestly didn't know if he wanted to be anywhere else except in that bed in that moment.

She knew what he meant; she was trained for war but it didn't mean she wanted it. The only difference was there was no home for her to long for – there wasn't anything for her to look forward to going back to. All there was for her was this moment. "What are you doing to me, Joe Liebgott?" she asked him.

The answer was so obvious to him, he could see it in her eyes as she memorized his face, could feel it in her fingertips as she traced the planes of his cheeks. "You're in love with me," he said having never actually said it aloud – he'd thought it, he hoped, but he had never admitted to himself that she actually was.

She wondered if he was right, if that was the answer. "Maybe," she said unsurely, watching his brows raise in surprise at her admittance.

"Maybe?" he asked her, startled she'd actually agreed – he should kiss her more often, he thought, she might tell him anything.

She saw his amazement, his hope, and she smiled. "Yeah," she breathed, finally admitting it. Her smile was gone when she took a breath as a new thought came to her; one she'd been wondering but kept forgetting to ask. "Where do you see yourself when this is over? I mean I know you're going back to California, but, what do you see?"

He tried to think of how to answer, of what she asking. And so he told her the first thing he thought of. "A wife, and kids – a lot fucking kids," he said smiling at the thought. "And a big house,"

"For all the little Liebgott's," she finished seeing him nod laughing briefly.

He stared hard at her face trying to imagine her in that picture, as a wife, a mother; it's obvious that was where this was going, but he couldn't see her settled down. It bothered him to no end that he couldn't imagine a future she was a part of. "What do you see?" he asked her, wondering if she could see herself outside of the OSS – that was the problem, this was her life. She was excitement and adventure and danger. It was no wonder he couldn't imagine her as a housewife.

Her brows creased as she looked at him, wondering what he was thinking. "You know I'm probably gonna die, right?" she asked. They'd had this conversation once before, she knew statistically the odds weren't in her favor, but Joe had cursed at her before stalking away – they'd been fine the next day, but they hadn't talked about it since. At least not until now. "Joe?"

"You're gonna try right?" he asked instead of answering. "You're at least gonna try to make it back home? We're not talking about this again, Chris. You don't fucking give up."

"Okay," she said softly, pressing her fingers to his mouth to quiet him. He didn't know how close she was gonna get to the enemy, now that they were about to jump into Germany, he didn't know a lot of things – it was an empty promise, but she gave it to him anyways. "Okay."

…

Chris had stood in the back of the tent as Winters explained Operation Market Garden, having received the details of the mission the night before when Sink had told Dick. "I understand that you two are close," Sink told them both. "I will allow her to brief you on her objectives. Dick, you're not gonna like them. Under no circumstances is anyone besides the three of us to know the details of what she will be doing," he told them severely. "Now I understand that you have many friends in the Company," he said looking to Chris, "I don't think I need to warn you against saying too much."

"No sir," she told him quietly, almost wishing he'd be the one to tell Dick.

Sink nodded before excusing himself, leaving Chris the responsibility of telling Dick what she would be sent out for. Dick waited until the door was closed before he stepped out of attention, but even then he didn't relax as he turned to Chris to see her troubled face. "How bad is it?" he asked her.

She stood with her hands folded behind her back, releasing any excess emotion she might still have. "There are a few small missions where I will go into town to organize resistance groups," she said watching Dick nod – those were his favorite missions if he had any, she was least likely to find herself at the wrong end of a weapon; though she would be in Germany, that might make them the most dangerous missions. "There is at least one confirmed mission where I will leave Easy to link with a SOE unit for general spying. We'll pose as Germans to infiltrate their ranks and learn their Intelligence; it's estimated that will keep me from Easy for two weeks, if the mission goes according to plan."

That mission was one Dick wasn't happy with; the thought of her conversing with German soldiers, who would kill her the moment they discovered she was a woman, left him with a bad taste in his mouth. How much he wanted to tell the OSS director no, he couldn't have her, that she belonged with Easy. But he could see from the stillness in her spine that there was something else, something worse – something not even Nixon, the Intelligence officer she communicated with most frequently, was allowed to know.

"There's one being finalized, it has to be known to the last detail," she told him, feeling her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth. "I'll link up with a group of four men and we'll allow ourselves to be taken prisoner. We'll give the Germans false information to lead them into an ambush. I guess I'll be telling you more when everything's come together; it won't be for at least a couple of months."

Dick stared down at her apathetic face not buying it for a second; she was afraid, he could see it in the muscle in her jaw – hear it in her stony voice. "Chris," he said reaching a hand for her.

"Don't touch me," she said stilling him. It was a few moments before she looked up at him, all the answer he needed shining in her eyes. "I can't be okay if you touch me," she told him softly.

He nodded not knowing what to say; if Nixon had been there he would've said something that made her smile and roll her eyes – he was good at putting her at ease, so was George. But Dick had nothing for her, nothing but his fury at the OSS for putting her so close to enemy fire knowing she had more of a chance at dying than surviving. "You can't tell Joe, or Speirs," he told her; they were the two she'd most likely tell, especially Joe because she couldn't seem to keep herself from telling him too much.

She smiled bitterly. "They're the last people I'd tell," she said honestly. "And if I had it my way, I wouldn't have told you either. I know you worry."

He couldn't have helped the small smile that briefly curled on his mouth even if he'd wanted to, because she was right – he worried about her, far too much and far too often. "I suppose I do," he agreed seeing her mouth twitch as though to grin.

He might not have known what to say, but he didn't have to – it was the same with him as it was with Joe. George and Nixon made her laugh to get her feeling better, Bill teased her, David talked to her about Hemingway, Buck would flirt, and Bull would tell a story. But Winters and Joe, all she wanted from them was to stand near so she could feel them – that was it, that was all she asked for.

I am so sorry for how short this is. Life is picking up and time to write is becoming sparse; so I'm thinking about making the chapters shorter so that I can actually get them out. So this chapter was really just a, here's a cute Joe moment, as well as heavy hinting at what is coming for Chris. Again, I'm sorry it's short, but I do hope you guys enjoyed it still.