#perry gets her own fic part two electric boogaloo

[sergeant-spoons]

And Know That Only I ~ Pt II

Perrine Blomme (Perry Bloom)

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Part 2 of Follow Me, My Dear, And Know That Only I Will Follow You.

Title comes from the song “Long Way Around” by The Sweeplings.

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The Airfield was as busy as a beehive on the morning of the big jump. It was to be Perry's first, and she considered herself rather fortunate that her luck had landed her with (supposedly) sleepy Holland. Every soldier from Private to Colonel bustled about, every minute demanding something new. The Toccoa men prepped themselves and the replacements tried to keep up; if they were lucky, they (like Perry or the newly-christened Babe) had an in with a Normandy veteran. Perry had just parted from Miller and Garcia, having been summoned by Sergeant Randleman for one last check-up. She could only suppose someone had let slip at her tiredness last night, and as she approached the sergeant, she found the culprit standing right at his side.

"Joe," she greeted him, then the others, "Sergeant. Doc."

"You feelin' alright, Bloom?" Doc Roe asked, studying her eyes and cheeks for signs of fever or delirium.

"Just peachy, Doc," she said. "No, wait, you're from the bayou, right?"

At his puzzled nod, she grinned.

"Then I'm fit as a croc, Doc."

Joe audibly groaned, but Randleman snorted, and Perry, pleased, prepared to convey her good nights' sleep and readiness for the jump. Before she could, however, something behind her caught the sergeant's eye and his smile dropped like a boulder off a cliff. Joe grabbed Perry by the shoulders and manhandled her behind Randleman and Roe, who'd stepped forward to conceal her.

"What the hell, guys?!" she yelped, trying to get around them, but they wouldn't let her. She had to grab Joe's shoulder and balance on her toes to see what was going on.

There was a transport going by with two men perched on the sides of the jeep, practically boot-to-shoulder with the driver. One of them sat with his chin up, bouncing merrily along with the rumbling of the jeep and waving to a few men he seemed to recognize, including Doc Roe. The other fellow—an officer, by the looks of his uniform—sat stiff as a gravestone, scanning the crowd with a thick glower.

"Who's that?" Perry asked, eyeing the second man. "He looks pissed."

"That there is Captain Sobel," Bull said, and she could tell without looking that something in his expression had soured.

"Oh, right." Perry gave a start. "Oh, shit. What's he doing here?"

"I don't know, and I don't want to find out."

"You sure? Something could be up."

Before she could try and slip around him, Joe grabbed Perry's arm and tugged her after him.

"Not for you to find out, either. Come on."

"Hey!" She pulled her arm back, ignoring the twinge it gave at the twisting motion. "For the last time, Joe I'm not a kid, so you can stop yanking me around, alright?"

His frown eased a bit, and when he nodded in the direction he wanted to take her, he seemed relieved when she continued to follow him. They skirted around the back of one tent and ducked into its neighbor, and Perry realized only once she was inside that it must be Joe's own. Well, it was the one he shared with Malarkey, but still—she felt suddenly bashful, put on the spot as if she was intruding on his childhood bedroom. There wasn't much left to witness, seeing as everyone had packed up that morning, but she could still smell his aftershave lingering in the closed air. It was the same used by all the men, but he added something to it that made the scent stand out—at least, to Perry it did. Maybe it was a spritz of cologne? She felt his hand on her arm and jumped, realizing too late that he'd asked her something she hadn't heard at all.

"Hey," he prodded. "You alright?"

Shaking off the strange urge to get up close to his face—to see if she was right about the cologne, of course—she had to ask him to repeat himself. Patient, he did, and she shrugged.

"Yeah, yeah, I, uh... I guess I got a bit spooked."

Starting with a truth seemed the way to go, and when he glanced out the open tarp flap toward the road where the transport had gone by, Perry jumped on the assumption.

"The way everybody talks about Sobel, it's like- like he's the monster under the bed, y'know? I never really expected to actually see him. And especially not here."

Joe sighed as he slung his pack onto the ground and knelt, shaking his head.

"You think he's jumping with us?"

He glanced up at her and she saw his frown had turned a bit stormy.

"Might be. If he is, chances are we'll leave him behind. He's too stubborn to listen to anybody out in the field, least of all his own sense—that's why we couldn't jump with him before. He'd get us all killed."

"Shit."

"Yeah. Shit."

He rose and stretched out his hands, and she saw he'd wrapped them as if the bandages were boxing tape.

"But enough about Sobel. If he jumps, he jumps."

He passed her a few strips for her own hands, and she couldn't keep a smile off her lips for long.

"Come on. One more time before we get on the planes."

As soon as she'd finished prepping her fists, she took up the stance he'd taught her and took a few quick practice swings. They mock-sparred for a bit until she managed to land a good one on his shoulder. He stumbled back and wobbled like he was about to fall, and Perry only understood he'd been messing around after she'd jumped forward and grabbed his shirt to steady him. He laughed, his hands coming to rest on her arms, and she squeezed his shirt as if displeased at his trickery when in reality she was just trying to keep her own balance.

"Thanks," he said, almost smirking, and Perry felt the fluttering in her chest maximize.

That was the first time he'd said just 'thanks' instead of 'thanks, kid'.

She stepped back, tugging at her hair, and Joe released her arms, nodding to her hands.

"You got 'em with you?"

She rifled through the inside pocket of her pack and showed him her brass knuckles. That gleam in his eyes from last night was back when he ruffled her hair and told her she'd done well. Leaning aside to peek out the tent flap, he missed the way her hand rose as if wanting to graze his chin and then fell just as quickly.

"Looks like Sobel's moved along," he reported. "You ready?"

She shrugged, starting to remove the wrappings.

"Ready as I'll ever be, I guess."

No glance or smile could have prepared her for the feeling of him taking her hands and unwrapping the rest of the bandages for her. It was such a tender and unexpected thing that she stood there and let him.

"No 'I guess'," he refuted, looking at her hands as he unwound the last strip. "You're gonna be fine."

"Right."

"Right?"

"I'm gonna be fine."

He stepped back, hesitated, and then held out the bandages to her.

"You'd better not need these out there."

Shaking her head, she pushed them back toward him, and he quirked a brow.

"No?"

"From what I've heard about your luck on D-Day," she replied, smiling faintly, "chances are, you'll need 'em."

He snorted and shook his head, but as he returned the bandages to his pack, she caught the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, betraying a kind of fondness that made her a little lightheaded.

"Yeah," he said, the gravel of his voice softening into sand, "you're probably right."

That day was a tumultuous one. The tall grass of Holland would have concealed one man, but a hundred helmets gleaming in the sun did little to disguise the advance. An orange flag welcomed them into Eindhoven, and by the time the better part of the company had entered the town, orange pennants had been strung from here to Kalamazoo. As men fell over themselves to flaunt their stations for the sake of a kiss (or a dozen), Perry searched for a way out of the crowd. Too many people meant too many close encounters and too high a chance of something going awry. She found Victor before long, but they'd only gone a few yards before they heard a kind of chanting from across the street. Perry, wan, hardly realized she'd jumped into the fray until four Dutchwoman were turning her away, their eyes downcast toward the blood and hair matting the cobblestones.

As soon as he caught up with her, Victor drew her aside, turmoil darkening his kind hazel eyes. Perry began to pace, the ugly scene just a few yards away filling her with a kind of rage she'd only felt once before in her life, on the day her mother abandoned the family. Stumbling her way out the door, a vodka bottle in hand, she'd turned to Clyde with venom in her eyes and spat that he was worthless. Perry—seeing red—nearly ran after her and gave her what for, but then Clyde began to cry and the brain fog lifted just enough for her to concede that violence wouldn't do any good. Seeing orange but feeling red this time, Perry was raring to start a fight. Victor agreed to back her up and they started back toward the abhorrent display, detouring only slightly to grab ahold of Joe and Doc Roe. The four Americans converged on the scene together, a spiteful Perry leading the charge, and started to chase off the spectators and perpetrators alike. In what seemed to be only a second, Perry found herself toe-to-toe with three scowling Dutchmen but would not back down, not for the sake of the first word and especially not the last. Victor came up to hover beside her as the argument boiled and bubbled until Perry came close to screaming at the inhumanity of it all.

“You do not know what we have lived-”

“No," she snapped, rage vibrating throughout her entire body, "I don’t. But I sure do know what it’s like to ruin yourself for the rights no person should have to beg for."

The ringleader of the three finally gave up and started to walk away, and Perry almost went after him, but again, somebody she cared about far more stopped her. Victor's hand on her shoulder brought her back to reality, and as a wave of unforgiving nausea swept over her, Perry turned and bent over her knees. Victor urged her over to a spot further away from judgmental eyes and Joe tried to give her his canteen to drink from, but she was too restless to stay still for long or even swallow. Victor went back over to one of the women still on the ground and sat beside her, and Perry was quick to follow. She crouched down beside her friend and gently introduced herself in Dutch as Doc Roe tended to the woman's bloodied scalp. After the woman had dried most of her blinding tears, she seemed to recognize Perry and threw herself into the soldier's arms with a wail. She kept repeating heroine over and over as she sobbed against Perry's shoulder, and they all just sat there, the Dutchwoman and the four soldiers, until the last of the crowd had dispersed.

“That coulda been my mother.”

Victor gave her a puzzled look, but the lump in her throat kept Perry from elaborating, and she stayed silent as she watched Lieutenant Lipton kindly lead the woman away, having offered to walk her home. Perry grabbed Victor's arm and used it as a crutch to bring herself to her wobbly feet, missing how Joe had offered her his on her other side. He dropped his arm, stuffed his brass knuckles in his pocket, and ran his hand through his hair.

"Your mother?" he asked, careful as could be, careful like he knew how Perry felt. Like he knew what it was like to want to punch the whole world. And that's what made her tell him (and Victor and Doc, of course) about Groningen and what leaving did to her family, about her mother and all the bottles in the cupboards, about how nothing could change what she'd done and why she'd thought she'd had to do it, and—most of all—about what little difference there was between the vultures of Sacramento and the wolves of Eindhoven. Joe looked awfully sorry to hear it all, and Perry itched to hug him but knew she might as well give herself up should she make the attempt. Just as she'd crossed the threshold of staring too long, Lieutenant Welsh popped up and dragged her and Victor away to find them lodgings for the night. His attempt was short-lived, however, and Victor ended up drifting off with Donald Hoobler and another trooper Perry didn't know well enough to name while Perry herself turned to Heffron and Guarnere for direction.

"Why don't ya go with Vest?" the sergeant of the pair suggested, pointing the butt of his pistol over her shoulder before nestling it back into its holster. "He said there's a bed or two to spare where he's goin'. Bet he wouldn't mind the comp'ny."

Unfortunately, Perry didn't know who this 'Vest' character was and ended up wandering on her own for a time. She'd just stopped to peer over a low fence into a stranger's fragrant garden when Joe Liebgott surfaced from the dwindling throng and all but dragged her down the street toward a boarding house with all its windows thrown open. As they walked, he informed her that Guarnere, having realized too late that she wouldn't know Vest if he was two feet in front of her, had sent Liebgott to find her. Lieb, in turn, had secured a room at the boarding house on his way and was certain there'd still be room for Perry. He was immediately contradicted by the frazzled landlady guarding the front door, but what she didn't know was that once Joe Liebgott set his mind to something, that something was going to get done. Then Joe Toye came down the stairs for the sole purpose of joining the persuasion and the landlady gave in, but only on the condition that Perry would share a room with one of the pair. To Perry's astonishment, Toye hooked his arm around hers—seemingly without a second thought—and began to lead her back up the stairs.

"He snores like a train engine," he elucidated, shooting her a smirk as Liebgott began to protest, and Perry could do little but laugh and turn her head toward the window in an attempt to hide her pinkening cheeks.

A few hours passed as they dropped their packs and went to find some dinner, then played poker with some of the other fellas in the boarding house until they got sick of losing to stony-faced Toye and hauled themselves off to bed. Perry suggested they do the same and Joe assented, and as the first stars came out, they kicked off their boots, took one last look out the window at the sunset, and readied for bed. Jostling for a spot in the cramped bathroom down the corridor for tooth-brushing and face-washing purposes left them more tired than before, and they rolled into bed almost as soon as they'd gotten back to the room. The mattress creaked a bit but was comfortable enough, and the pillow was one of the nicest they'd maintained since joining the Airborne. The only issue was the singularity of it:

It was the pillow because it was the only one.

Their lighthearted bickering over who would get it devolved into sleepy grabbing and poorly-suppressed snickering that they tried to bite back for the sake of those trying to sleep in the adjoining rooms. Equally persistent, neither would relent, but then Perry stuffed the pillow under Joe's head and plopped hers down on his chest, tossing both arms over his torso to keep him still. She expected him to squirm a bit, but he didn't, just laughed and laughed until she had to threaten to use the pillow to smother him to get him to stop. A peaceful kind of quiet descended upon the room, and as the darkness become total, neither moved an inch, thoroughly comfortable as they lay and daring to assume the other felt the same.

Twenty minutes later, Perry had drifted off into the land of slumber and Joe Toye didn't know what to do with himself.

He knew he'd landed himself in a sort of predicament as soon as they came into the room and saw there was only one bed. It was big enough for the both of them and Perry didn't seem bothered, but what she didn't know was that something had been nagging at Joe ever since he saw her jump into the fray that afternoon, a kind of fire in her eyes that ignited his own. The day turned to night and all of a sudden, they were sharing the bed and he had no idea how to proceed. Now, this was long before he knew who Perry really was—that 'he' was actually a 'she'—but what he did know was that he'd let her stay there, cuddled up to him like a lover, because every time he looked at her she lit a flame inside his chest. And that flame, stubborn as he was, wouldn't go out no matter how hard he willed it to. But here, in the dark, in the night... it was enough for him to pretend. They didn't have to be who they were, they could be someone else, in the dark.

He could pretend that maybe, just maybe, if he was braver than he was, if things were different in so many ways, if this Private Bloom dozing on his chest was a Miss Bloom instead...

"Get some sleep, Lovely Summer," he mumbled against her hair where it tickled his chin, his heart pounding like the dickens. He hadn't expected any sort of acknowledgment, assuming she was fast asleep, so when he felt her nuzzle her lips against his chest in a half-asleep kiss, he felt a thrill and a chill—and it was all too much. Uncertainty flashed into fear, and he froze where he was, one arm draped loosely over Perry while the other hand gripped the sheets, seeking solace. When at last he tried to get up, Perry made a muffled noise of displeasure against his shirt. The vibrations of her voice shot a shiver up his stiff arms, and he hesitated.

"No," he thought he heard her say in a voice that seemed higher than it should have been. "Sleep. Here."

"Right here?"

"Right here."

And then she was asleep, really asleep. He felt the rise and fall of her chest beside him and wondered at the strange way she curved the top half of her torso away from his almost subconsciously. It was as he lay there that he felt his arms relax, and then his hands, his shoulders, and finally, his heart. It became clear even to his sleepy mind that he wouldn't have gotten up after all, even without her protest. He was just too darn comfortable like this, too darn safe, too darn... happy. So Joe laid back down, closed his eyes, and decided to stay happy—at least until the morning twilight gave way to the dawn.

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Although the first light of day was only just poking through the window, Joe was gone by the time Perry awoke. She sat up, rubbed at her eyes, and felt poorly about herself until the door creaked open and a pair of hands offered two cups of coffee. Joe's gentle smile danced above them, tugging up at the corners when he started to move the cups in a song and dance as Perry tried to take one. She laughed and he relented, handing her a cup, then fumbling in his pocket for one solitary packet of sugar. They split it and pretended it made all the difference in their bitter morning beverages, sitting on the floor and eyeing the world outside the window. Perry kept an eye on her watch and when Joe asked her if she had a hot date, she snorted and told him she didn't want to be late for whatever came next.

"We don't even know what that's gonna be," he said, then, after a beat: "Perry."

"What?"

Joe nodded toward the floor, indicating the bedroom beneath theirs.

"Your foot's tappin' so much you've woken 'em up."

Perry jumped to her feet, flustered, and took a long, hard look at the sunny day while Joe took a long, hard, unnoticed look at her.

"Here's an idea," she said, turning to rifle through her pack and emerging with a block of rations. "C'mon."

Joe didn't get up, just watched her go.

"Where you goin'?"

"It's beautiful out," she said from the doorway. "Don't you wanna eat outside?"

He hesitated, and that was all she needed to know he wouldn't be joining her. Her spirits fell, and her expression must have shown it, for he started to rise, but she waved him back down.

"I'll just go and find Victor or somebody. You- you go back to sleep. Or something."

That was the last time they'd see each other for quite some time. Perry had only just located Victor and Donald Hoobler—dining upon a whole breakfast spread on the upwind side of a haybale—when a runner came past, informing everyone he saw of their proceeding orders. They hopped aboard the tanks of their sister regiment within the hour and started to roll out for Nuenen, receiving a most boisterous farewell from the locals of Eindhoven. At times, Perry was able to glimpse Joe's helmet moving on a tank up ahead and knew it was him from the way his shoulders moved as he talked or listened to a friend. She itched to go see him, maybe make sure they were on good terms, but doubt crept in and held her nerve like a vice. She didn't know who they were anymore, and he didn't know who she was, and all the not-knowing made her dizzy enough that when Lieutenant Brewer crumpled like a sandcastle right in front of her, she didn't even flinch.

The battle didn't last long and ended up a resounding failure on the Americans' part. Things went blurry for Perry after a time and all she could really do was stick to her rifle and her buddies and try not to get shot like Brewer. Her senses only started to clear around the time they made it far enough down the road to safely stop for the night, and panic started to set in as she took stock of who'd kept up with the gloomy crowd and who hadn't. Sergeant Martin spread the word that Sergeant Randleman was missing and—worse—that Victor Rich had vanished with him. Martin was the last to have seen them, which didn't seem to be sitting well with his nerves. With Victor and her squadron leader gone, Perry was already close to her wits' end; the final blow came when an emotionally- and physically-drained Doc Roe informed her that Joe Toye had been sent off the line not ten minutes ago, having been hit badly in the leg during the battle.

Turns out Joe had needed those bandages after all.

"How's your squadron?" Doc Roe asked, and it hurt them both to think it was a question he was asking in Rich's stead. "Everybody accounted for?"

"Everybody 'cept..." Perry looked down, squashing her grief like it was the beetle crawling over her boot. "Well. Might as well say it. Miller's dead."

Roe just shook his head, discontent, and went back to his work. For a moment, Perry envied him, that he had something to occupy his mind with, then felt guilty for those who'd been wounded or killed at Nuenen. Buck Compton went by on a stretcher and tapped her leg, telling her to keep her chin up, and when she told him blank-faced that Randleman and Red were missing, his pained smile fell. She watched him go and kicked at the earth, the voices in her head getting louder and louder. Fortunately, Sergeant Lipton turned up in the right place at the right time. He drew Perry aside in an attempt to assess her clearly-fragile mental state only for her to startle him by letting loose a secret she'd kept for months upon months. Three of the most important people to her had gone MIA or WIA, and now Perry, mocked by a starless sky, let it all spill out. She told Lipton who she was and why and how she'd gotten there, and despite his initial amazement, he got over his shock marvelously quickly. A bit of anger flashed through his expression, then pity, then uncertainty, but by the time he realized her panic, he'd managed to square it all with himself just enough to prevent her from completely losing her shit. Unfortunately, there wasn't a thing he could do to fix the situation other than try and calm her down. Once he'd managed to settle her just enough to think clearly, he sent her to refill her canteen and went off by himself to think things over.

Perry returned to the spot she'd left Lipton and found no trace. At a bit of a loss, she stood and chugged all of the water she'd just retrieved until she felt sick. She sat down until she felt less nauseous, but by that time, the gloaming was turning to twilight and she realized a whole night had passed. In the absence of a sane mind, she hadn't noticed. Still, there wasn't much for an enlisted man to see or do at that encampment other than pace and stew, and so pace and stew, Perry did. Eventually, Sergeant Martin marched over, grabbed her by the arm, and dragged her over to Skip Muck in the hopes that he could:

"-calm down the anxious rabbit whose makin' everybody else anxious—oh, for fuck’s sake, would you stop that shaking-"

Perry managed to force her limbs to go still, but in doing so, sent her heart speeding and thumping all throughout her chest. Though she barely knew him and he, her, Skip frowned with concern. He squinted at her face and blinked for a moment, then turned back to Martin.

"Uh, Johnny, you seen Liebgott anywhere?"

She might have winced to think he'd pawn her off on another so quickly if she hadn't been used to such treatment of replacements, but instead, she just sagged and resumed tapping her foot. Skip's look turned sympathetic and he looked close to apologizing before Martin turned over his shoulder and lit up, drawing Skip's and Perry's attention.

"Bull!" the sergeant exclaimed. "Red!"

Reunions were swift and clamorous. Perry was the first to make it to Victor, jumping right on his back and nearly knocking him over. Victor just laughed and asked if she was alright, and she retorted that if anyone should be asking such a thing, it should be her. A crowd started to gather and Perry hopped down, adjusting her shirt and sleeves from where they'd ridden up. She kept looking right at Victor, then at Randleman, then back to Victor as if this was some kind of illusion conjured up by her sleepless, heartsick mind. Fortunately, they were real flesh and blood and had come back to the company after all. For a second or two as she watched Skip walk Victor up toward the medic's station while Doc Spina came down the hill to greet Randleman, she wondered if maybe, just maybe, Joe Toye would pop up from behind one of the trucks and come over just to ruffle her hair and tell her everybody was mistaken, he hadn't been hit this time around.

Alas, Joe was fated to stay gone—and for several months at that.

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Read Pt III here.