SO THIS PERCO ONE-SHOT IS JUST A CUTE, CHEESY LITTLE STORY I CAME UP WITH BECAUSE, WELL... THE GUY NEEDS SOME LOVE ON HERE! ANYWAY, I HOPE THAT YOU ENJOY IT FOR THE SIMPLE LITTLE ONE-SHOT THAT IT IS.

** GRACE POV **

"Penny for your thoughts?"

I was laying across a bunk tucked into the darkened corner of a room in Berchestgaden. The room, and indeed the town, was filled with inebriated paratroopers who were now sleeping off the celebrations of the day. Victory had been declared in Europe and Major Winters, having come across Hermann Goerring's seemingly endless stash of alcohol, had been all smiles as his hard-working, battle-weary battalion had imbibed and congratulated each other on making it through the war alive.

Next to me lay the one other person still awake in the room, the diminutive Italian and my best friend, Frank Perconte. We had been indulging in a suspiciously tasty champagne that went down like ginger ale but hit you more like vodka, but neither of us were pass-out drunk. Instead, we were just beyond that giggling-at-nothing, alcohol-begets-honesty stage of tipsy, and we had been talking almost non-stop about everything and nothing at all for hours now. I must have grown quiet as I stared up at the ceiling, my head resting on the pillow just next to his, which is what inspired his inquiry.

"Save your money, Frank. My thoughts aren't worth that much."

We had been attached at the hip since I arrived at Toccoa for training. I'd been worried about the potential negativity that I would face as a woman paratrooper, but when I walked into the barracks, a cute, dark-haired guy was standing beside the door. He took one look at me and lifted me off the ground with a bear hug before he even introduced himself.

"Oh, thank God! I'm not the shortest one here! Look, Bill! I'm not the shortest one here! You owe me five bucks!"

It was the first of many times that Frank Perconte would make me laugh. He had put me back on my feet, thrown an arm around my shoulder, and finally introduced himself and the rest of the guys. Since then, he'd never been far from my side. Now, three years later, he lay next to me at the close of the war and I couldn't imagine that there had been a time when he wasn't a part of my life.

Beside me, he chuckled and argued, "Oh please. I'd give a small fortune to know what goes on in that pretty little head of yours. You thinking about what to do when we get home?"

I sighed and nodded. It had been three long years since I'd thought about the future, and while there was still a good chance that we would redeploy to the Pacific, the idea of going home was looming large in my mind.

I had come from a world where appearances were the most important thing. My parents had passed away, and everyone in my hometown had expected me to marry a wealthy local businessman so that I could be taken care of. The only problem? I couldn't stand the man, or his idea that I should be some silent, smiling trophy on his arm. I lost some so-called friends when I turned him down and the rest when I decided to petition to train as a paratrooper. I sold the house and left my whole life behind me, and the truth was that I had no idea what I was going to do next.

Sensing that I was lost in thought again, he propped himself up on his arm and looked down at me. He knew my story. His tone was reassuring.

"Hey, it's going to be fine. Look what you've survived the last three years. You can handle anything. Besides, I was kinda thinking…"

"You were thinking? That's a scary prospect."

"Oh, ha ha. Very funny." He feigned a glare, but the dim light shining through the window showed the twinkle in his eyes and it gave him away. I smiled and his own grin broke free as he draped an arm across my stomach and pulled me into him. "There you are. Thought the champagne might already be wearing off for a minute."

I giggled and turned toward him, leaning my head on my arm to mirror him and taking another sip from the bottle we had been sharing. The champagne rush, along with the fact that he'd left his arm draped across me so that we were now face to face and dangerously close, left my heart pounding so that I could hear the sound of my blood in my ears.

"Nope," I giggled nervously. "I'm still good. Just thinking about where to go after this."

"With me, of course," he answered as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, draining the last of the bottle and sitting it on the floor beside the bunk.

"Well, yeah, but I mean when we get back home. I just don't know where to go. I mean, I'm not going back to my hometown. There's nothing for me there. You're going to start a life. Meet a girl. Get married. Start a family of your own. I want all of that too."

"You know," he mumbled as the last of the champagne began to hit his bloodstream, "I heard somewhere that friends make the best lovers."

"Yeah, I heard that too. You planning on proposing to George? 'Cuz I think you two would make an adorable couple."

He chuckled, "Oh yeah. George Perconte has a lovely ring to it," but his arm tightened around my waist so that I could feel his chest rising and falling against mine. His voice was huskier when he spoke again. "No, sweetheart, it wasn't him I was talking about as a lover."

"Frank," I breathed, "I think the champagne has gone to our heads."

He pressed his forehead to mine and took a deep breath before answering, "Maybe so. But then we have an excuse for doing this."

His lips found mine before I had time to question what he was talking about. My head swam with the giddiness of a first kiss, but my mouth moved with familiarity, as though I'd been kissing him like this every day for the last three years. My hands slipped into his hair of their own accord, my legs tangling with his as the weight of him slowly pushed my body back onto the bunk.

** FRANK POV **

It wasn't the champagne that made me kiss her. No, I'd wanted to kiss her for as long as I could remember. It was the champagne that finally erased the inhibitions that had prevented me from kissing her until now.

My body settled across hers easily, feeling so familiar against my own from hours and days spent fighting shoulder to shoulder in the fields and nights cuddling together in the foxholes. The truth was that it had been on those cold nights in the woods of Belgium that I first realized that I didn't ever want her so intimately entwined with anyone but me. Of course, I hadn't told her then.

I pulled away from our kiss and looked down at her, brushing a strand of hair from her face. Beneath me, her eyes fluttered open but she said nothing. For a tense moment after that first tender, tentative kiss, we weren't exactly sure where to go next. Then, the inhibitions that had been trampled beneath the champagne finally died away altogether. I crashed my lips to hers again, and every ounce of fear, happiness, anger, confusion, passion, frustration, and love that had been between us for the last three years exploded.

My hand slipped to her hip, gripping the fabric of her trousers so that I had to remind myself not to rip them. Her tongue danced with mine until, breathless, I pulled away to explore the sensitive skin along her jawline and neck. Her fingers fisted at my hair. My hips shifted against hers, and she wrapped one leg around my body to encourage the friction. I slipped my hand underneath her shirt, grazing the skin of her stomach as I pulled it upward and finally dropped it on the floor beside us.

My hand brushed the mouth of the champagne bottle where the last drops had been clinging and left the moisture on my fingers as I moved to touch her again. Slowly, I traced a path along the underside of her breast, trailing up her sternum, and finally across the other breast, leaving the droplets behind as I went. Pressing another quick, soft kiss to her lips, I held her eyes as I returned to the beginning of my path and followed it again, this time with my tongue. She gasped as I started the journey and writhed beneath me as I finished it, my lips settling around the pink flesh and teasing it stiff.

Her fingernails brushed my lower back and shoulder blades, slipping my shirt off over my head. I buried my face in her neck to suppress a groan. She sighed against my ear and I could feel my body throbbing with need. I rolled and lay back down beside her, eyes meeting, chests heaving. For a moment, we just stared at each other, a strand of tension being drawn between us. Then it snapped. There was a flurry of hushed laughing and trying not to fall off of the bunk as we kicked off what remained of our clothes and pulled the blankets up around us, but as my now-naked body settled back across hers, the reality of what was happening between us silenced us both.

I stared down into her eyes and she swallowed hard. It seemed that the giddiness left behind by the champagne had been burned away in the heat between us. Her fingers ran through my hair, nails giving me goosebumps as they brushed my scalp. I brushed a strand of her hair back with my finger and pressed a soft, chaste kiss against her lips.

"You are so beautiful."

She actually looked surprised.

"You think I'm beautiful?"

Had I really, in all the time we'd spent together, never told her how beautiful she was? I thought back and realized that I probably hadn't. None of the situations we had been in thus far really led the conversation down romantic pathways. It had always been there though, just beneath the surface. At least it had been for me.

"Gracie, baby, you are the most beautiful woman I've ever known."

** GRACE POV **

I'm sure that I blushed, but he was looking down at me with such a serious look that I could only manage, "Are you sure that's not just the alcohol talking?"

He was quiet for a second, and it made me a little nervous because I realized that I didn't want it to just be the alcohol. Then he gave me the gentlest smile and brushed his fingertips across my cheek.

"I remember that you smelled like flowers on the first day I picked you up off the ground in that Toccoa barracks, and how you felt cuddled against me when we shared a bunk on the ship to England. I know the sound of the sighs you make in your sleep as well as I know my own voice. I can still see your face, all dirty and exhausted in our foxhole, but laughing until you could hardly breathe because Doc had dumped the entire contents of my pack out into the snow in search of scissors. I've spent the last three years falling in love with you and you don't even realize that I think you're beautiful?"

I lifted my head from the pillow to meet his lips and was immediately lost in his kiss. His tongue swept against mine and I could see myself leaned back against him on a bunk at Toccoa as he rubbed my shoulders after a twelve mile, full-ruck march. I remembered how his breath felt against my neck, and the gentleness of his hands as he massaged the soreness from my muscles. I thought about the way he had looked at me when I showed up in a dress to our New Year's Eve party in Aldbourne. I felt his arms around me after we had finally found each other on D-Day, and the way his fingers had slipped between mine as we wound our way through the streets of Eindhoven.

I had been terrified when he was shot at Foy and miserable while he was gone to the hospital. It was the longest we had been away from each other in three years. Standing at the CP, watching George Luz taking inventory on the rations, I couldn't even bring myself to laugh as the guys needled him for Hershey bars.

"There's not enough to go around! I'm not even sneaking Gracie a Hershey bar, and she looks like the most depressed person in the world right now!" he was saying.

From the doorway, I heard, "Aww, come on, loudmouth! Give the lady a Hershey bar! She looks like she lost her best friend!" and suddenly, he had been there.

John Martin had beaten me to him, shaking his hand and welcoming him back, but when I reached them, he stepped aside with a smile and I was lifted off the ground in another bear hug just as I had been the day we met… and that was the moment that I realized that I had fallen in love with Frank Perconte.

This time, when he looked down at me, I saw so much more than the face of my best friend.

"Come home with me, Grace. When this is all over and we get off of the boat in the States, just come with me. If you're going to start over, then start over with me."

"You're really going to want me around with all of your old friends? You're going to go home looking all handsome in that dress uniform, and some pretty girl is going to steal your heart and…"

He shut me up with another kiss and whispered against my lips, "Gracie, some pretty girl already stole my heart. Just say you'll come with me. I'm used to having you beside me. Except for those days in the hospital, it's been three years since I went to sleep or woke up without you. You know as well as I do that home isn't going to feel like home unless we are together."

The hell of being away from him while he'd been at the hospital had been enough for me to know he was right. With the bare muscles of his chest pressed to mine, I could feel him holding his breath as he waited for my answer and his sigh of relief when I nodded.

Our next kiss was so passionate that it felt like my skin had been set aflame. He held himself over me with one arm and let the other hand slip down to my thigh. I had to bite my lip to suppress a moan, digging my fingernails into his back as he shifted his hips, his body slowly joining with mine. The rhythm was slow but steady as we tried to stifle our sounds of pleasure, and I gasped his name as he left what would certainly be a telling mark on my collarbone.

His skin was slipping easily against mine and, between kisses and heavy, gasping breaths; a delicious friction was building between us. My muscles were quivering. His movements were becoming erratic. The tightly-bound coil of control that we had been desperately clinging to for the last three years was quickly unravelling. The edge was rushing up quickly, like the ground that had rushed to meet us during our jumps. I squeezed my eyelids shut and fought back the urge to cry out as the stars exploded behind them. Frank covered my mouth with his, muffling his own release, and I could feel him throb inside me.

"God, baby, you feel so good," he whispered into my ear. "I can't wait to get you home so that I can have you all to myself."

With that statement came the obvious realization that we were still in a room full of men, and both of us glanced around quickly. Everyone still seemed to be out, and for a moment, we giggled like naughty children who had gotten away with something. He reached down and handed me my clothes, and we dressed quickly under the blankets. At last, we were settled and facing each other on the bunk again. He looked at me sleepily, brushing his fingers affectionately along my cheek, and smiled as I cuddled into his arms. We fell asleep tangled up in each other as we had done so many times before.

I woke next to him in the dim light of the morning. As was our routine, he stirred beside me as soon as he felt me stretching, and pulled our toothbrushes and toothpaste from his pack beside the bunk. We quietly made our way to the bathroom, but once inside, the silence continued to hang between us. I tried to fight my rising panic.

I could hear the others stirring in the next room, and I knew that I wouldn't have long to work up the courage to say something before they started taking over the bathroom. Maybe he had been so drunk that he didn't remember anything had happened. Or maybe he did, and he was trying to figure out how pretend that it hadn't happened. Or how to let me down gently. Or…

I was gripping the counter and trying to take deep breaths to keep my anxiety down. Frank looked over at me, concerned.

"Hey, you okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine."

He stepped toward me and turned me around to face him, but I was having a hard time meeting his eyes because I was afraid that I might start to cry. Finally, he put a finger under my chin and lifted my face.

"Talk to me. What's wrong?"

"Nothing, Frank. Really."

"Bullshit. Is this about last night? Are you upset about what happened?" Well, at least he remembered. I shook my head, but a tear slipped out anyway and suddenly, he was the one who looked nervous. "Do you regret it? Being with me last night?"

"No!" I burst out, "Of course I don't regret it! I love…" I caught myself before the rest of it slipped out, but it was too late. Now he would have to figure out how to tell me that we were just friends. Instead, I noticed a slow smile spread across his face.

"You love me. You can say it," he reassured, catching another tear that had slipped down my cheek. He leaned in to me, wrapping his arms around my waist and pressing his lips to mine. "You don't have to be scared. I meant everything I said last night. I love you. I want you to come home with me. I want you to meet my family. I've already told them all about you. My mom's last letter said that she was already looking for houses for us and…"

This was the Frank I had fallen in love with, chirping excitedly with a smile that went all the way up to his eyes. I wore my own smile as I watched him, until he got to the part about his mom's letter.

"Wait, why would your mom already be looking at houses for us? What did you tell her? I mean, your mom was okay with you bringing some girl home to live with you?"

Frank's grin widened and he reached into his pocket, pulling something out and holding his hand out in front of me.

"She was when I told her that I bought this the last time we were in Mourmelon."

He uncurled his fingers and I looked down at a small band sitting in his palm. My hand came up to cover my mouth and the tears fell freely as he knelt in front of me.

"Gracie, I told you last night that I couldn't imagine going to sleep or waking up without you being there, and I meant it. I always want you beside me. So I'm asking you, will you please be my wife?"

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't talk. All I could do was cry and nod as the only man I'd ever really loved slipped a delicate gold band onto my finger. He stood and kissed me before lifting me off the ground in yet another memorable bear hug. As he sat me back on my feet, Bull came shuffling sleepily into the bathroom.

"Damn, Perco, you finally put that ring on her finger? Took you long enough!"