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cetaitlaverite · 2 days

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Why All This Music?

Masters of the Air - Rosie Rosenthal x OC

link to the masterlist is here updates will probably be slower after this one - sorry, but thank you for the continued love!!

11. The Idea of Romance

Freddie found it difficult navigating the sea of people in the officers’ club. When she’d left the base had been empty, all but one crew unaccounted for. In the week she’d been away replacement crews had arrived and she herself had brought back with her a whole new gaggle of wireless operators. Suddenly, the base was alive with people again. Freddie just didn’t recognise most of them.

She had a hard time trying to find Millie. She wanted so badly to just talk to her best friend but now she had hordes of brand new w/ops fighting for her attention, calling her ‘ma’am’ and asking her questions. Some of the new boys, new airmen and new German-speaking wireless ops, kept asking her to dance. She hadn't been asked to dance since Rosie had arrived - all of the old crews had known her well enough to know to steer clear of the subject.

The music was loud and Millie, Freddie found, being incredibly rude by not paying any attention to the conversation she had been dragged into, was at the bar. Drinking herself silly, just as they had done together on Freddie’s last night before training.

She’d feared that this might become a habit.

“Excuse me,” Freddie said hastily, exiting the conversation even though one of the new airmen was mid-sentence. She pushed her way through throngs of people, ignoring them when they tried to stop her to talk, until she was finally at Millie’s side. “Mils -”

“Freddie!” Millie greeted her, bursting with all the excitement of a puppy. “I was looking for you but I couldn’t find you so I came to get another drink.”

Freddie smiled at her kindly, hiding her grimace at the way Millie was slurring. “How many have you had so far, Mils?”

“I think this many,” Millie said, lifting a hand to hold up four fingers.

Freddie didn’t believe her. “Beers?” she asked.

“Whiskeys,” Millie corrected. “Beer isn’t strong enough, Fred.” She gave Freddie a meaningful look, as if to say she was disappointed she’d had to explain that, before turning back to the bar to stare down the barman in the hopes her scrutiny would make him serve her quicker.

“Do you think maybe you should slow down?” Freddie asked warily. “We don’t want you to end up like we all did last time.”

Millie brushed this comment aside. “I’m fine.”

Freddie sighed. “Mils -”

“I said I’m fine,” Millie snapped. “Or I will be, when Atley eventually lets me order another fucking drink!” Her voice rose in volume and agitation until she knew Atley, working the bar, could hear her.

“Coming right up,” he said. His glance at Millie was wary and intimidated. It made Freddie wonder how many times this had happened since she’d been away. Had Millie been drinking herself into oblivion every night for the week Freddie had been training?

“Mils,” Freddie said as gently as she could manage, laying a hand on Millie’s shoulder, “drinking won’t make anything better.”

“It does,” Millie disagreed, shrugging her hand off, refusing to look at her. “When I drink I don’t feel it as much.”

“You can’t drink until he comes back -”

“I’ll drink until the end of my fucking life if I have to,” Millie cut across her coldly. “If that’s how long it takes for John to come back then that’s what I’ll do.”

Freddie’s heart was aching because she knew this pain and even still didn’t know how to stop it. She’d tried everything when Daniel had gone down. She’d turned to cigarettes but been dissatisfied with the short-term hit, had turned to drinking but it had only made her weepier, had only made her miss him more. She’d turned to driving stolen military jeeps as fast as she could down country lanes, to staying awake for days on end until her body forced her unconscious, had managed to break into the airfield infirmary at one point and had injected herself with morphine just to dull the ache.

But none of it had worked. All of it had made her feel like a shell of herself. Every time the thrill subsided she’d be left feeling empty, confronted with a darker world than the one she’d been trying to escape.

“It won’t help,” Freddie insisted, leaning on the bar to avoid being overheard. If Millie wasn’t going to accept gentle words then Freddie would have to give her blunt ones. “You can drink yourself into unconsciousness as many times as you like but it won’t change the ache you feel. It won’t bring him back or make you love him less.”

“You think you know all about this, Fred,” Millie said, pushing up from the bar and knocking back the glass of whiskey Atley had placed in front of her in one go, “just because you lost a boyfriend too. But you don’t. It’s different for me than it is for you.”

Freddie took a stumbling step away from her. “How do you figure?” she asked, her hands shaking at her sides. Her cheeks were burning and her eyes were stinging. Millie may as well have just slapped her across the face.

“Because you found Rosie,” Millie told her lowly, finally turning to face her. “You’ve moved on and I won’t be able to.”

Freddie’s jaw fell open. She took another stumbling, instinctive step backwards before changing her mind and stepping back in close. “I know you’re only saying this because you’re drunk,” she said, her hands shaking so viciously she had to curl them into fists, “and because you’re hurting, so I’ll tell you this once and pray you never give me a reason to say it again: fuck you, Millie. Fuck you. Don’t speak to me like that. I’m trying to look after you the way you always have for me. Don’t punish me for my efforts.”

She gave Millie no time to reply, just turned on her heel and stormed away.

Freddie felt like running away. She felt like hiding. She felt like taking Meatball and traipsing all the way off base until she could sit with him in a field and listen to herself think, until she could cry and be sure no one was going to ask her about it.

But that would do no one any good, especially not herself. She’d grown up since she’d turned to escaping as a form of self-defence.

“Rosie,” Freddie said. She was trying her best to mask the wobbling of her voice as she stopped by the table he was sitting at with his crew. He looked up at her instantly, the moment he’d heard her voice, eyebrows furrowed at whatever he found in her eyes. “Can we go?”

Without replying verbally, Rosie immediately stood from his table and led her out the door. He didn’t spare time to say his goodbyes, didn’t finish off the pint of beer which had still been half-full in front of him. No questions asked, he took the lead and guided her out, a hand resting protectively on the small of her back and a stormy expression preventing anyone from bothering her this time.

Once outside, Freddie could finally breathe. The night air filled her lungs as she gasped for breath, calming the stinging in her eyes.

“Come on,” Rosie said gently, taking her hand to guide her away from the door.

Freddie held on tight to him, wrapped her other hand around his arm to feel him close, tried to settle her breathing and ease the ache in her throat. She didn’t want to cry about this. Millie hadn’t meant what she’d said. Millie needed patience and Freddie would give it to her. She would be prepared for the attack next time. This time, she just needed to calm down.

Rosie led Freddie into one of the men’s huts - his hut, she presumed, which was mercifully empty - and over to a bed in the corner. The position of the bed was exactly the same as her new bed, the one she’d chosen today - furthest from the door and the bathroom - and she smiled as she sniffled, following him over.

“Why don’t you sit down, alright, Fred?” Rosie suggested gently, guiding her by the hand until she was close enough to the bed to sit down on it.

She did, wiping at the slight moisture beneath her eyes, unavoidable even though she’d won the fight against her tears.

Rosie started rummaging through his footlocker and Freddie watched him idly, thinking distantly about the lemonade she’d been drinking from and had misplaced at some point amidst the confusion of conversation. She wanted that lemonade now. Maybe she’d go back and get another one once she’d settled herself down.

“Aha,” Rosie muttered in triumph as he came upon what he’d been searching for. He stood to his full height, hiding whatever it was behind his back, and came to crouch in front of her. “Now,” he began, smiling just slightly up at her, “it’s not much, but there wasn’t a gift shop at the flak house, so this is the best I could do.”

Freddie giggled quietly, nodding in acceptance of his disclaimer, before he produced a pilot’s crusher cap from behind his back.

“A pilot’s hat!” Freddie exclaimed, smiling as she accepted it from him. “Where did you get it?” She knew it wasn’t his - his was sitting beside her on his bed.

“Found it on a bench on the grounds,” Rosie explained, chuckling slightly, just a little bit awkward. “I figured if the guy who owns it ain’t gonna look after it I know someone who will.”

“I will!” Freddie assured him, sharing a smile over the top of her new hat as she turned it over in her hands. “Thank you, Rosie. Really.”

“Of course,” he replied, taking the hat from her hands and placing it gently on her head. “See,” he said as he came back to crouching before her, “I bet you wear it better than he did, too.”

Freddie grinned, smiling shyly and shrugging in response to his subtle compliment.

Rosie gazed at her for a beat, his eyes searching her face, before his smile turned softer. “You feeling a little better?”

Freddie nodded.

“You wanna tell me what happened back there?”

She drew in a deep breath, nodding more to encourage herself than in response to him, before she confessed quietly, “Millie and I had an argument.”

Rosie frowned. “What about?” He’d never known the two of them to be anything other than thick as thieves. They were always either attached at the hip or gushing about each other, each other’s closest confidant and greatest hero.

“She’s developing a drinking problem,” Freddie said quietly, meeting Rosie’s eyes and staying there. “Because of Brady. She was already clearly drunk and only ordering more so I tried to get her to stop. And she told me that I don’t understand what it’s like for her because it’s different for me, what I went through with Daniel.”

“Why does she think it’s different for you?” Rosie asked softly.

Freddie hesitated, chewing on her bottom lip as she considered this next confession. They had been Millie’s words, but would it be presumptuous of her to repeat them as though she agreed? She and Rosie were friends, nothing more, but there was something about their relationship which wasn’t, had never been, strictly platonic. It had been clear to both of them for a while that Rosie was following Freddie’s lead and going at her pace, and once she was ready to go ahead then he would make the move.

Even still, giving voice to it would feel awkward. They had never spoken about their attraction to one another.

Freddie sighed and let it spill out of her. She was tired of holding things in. “Because I have you and she said she won’t be able to move on.”

Rosie and Freddie watched each other closely, each wondering what they should say next. Rosie was fighting hard to force himself not to ask whether Freddie thought she had him the same way she’d had Daniel, whether what was between them was developing into romance, but he knew it wasn’t the time. Freddie, on the other hand, was fighting not to try to cover her tracks, to dismiss the idea and destroy all the progress they’d made. It was instinctive to reject the idea of romance even when it was there. But it would do neither of them any good.

Instead, Freddie forced herself to talk about her feelings. She never had been much good at it but Rosie made her want to try. “It made me feel so… dismissed,” she admitted. “She knows all about how I’ve been struggling, clearly still struggle even now, with what happened to Daniel. She’s my best friend - she’s the one who is always, always there for me when I break down about it. So for her to say that it’s different because I’ve moved on…” She took in a stuttering deep breath, willing herself to calm down. “It felt like a slap in the face that she thinks I’ve forgotten Daniel just because I’ve met you.”

Rosie nodded, coming to sit beside her on the bed as he considered his response. “I can understand why that would hurt you so much,” he told her softly. “And Millie needs to apologise. But she loves you and I know her well enough to know she didn’t mean it.”

“She shouldn’t have said it,” Freddie argued.

Rosie nodded, watching her struggling against the quivering of her bottom lip. “I know. And if she says it again we’ll have a problem. But she’s hurting, and you’re the person she feels safe enough with to let it out.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

“No,” Rosie agreed. “But did you have much of a hold on your actions after you first lost Daniel?”

Freddie cracked a tiny smile at this, turning until she could press her face into Rosie’s bicep. “No,” she admitted.

“There you go.”

Freddie laughed quietly into his arm. “Rosie?”

“Sweetheart?”

“Can I sit in your lap?”

He grinned - she didn’t see it but she knew he was grinning - and shifted to lift her into his lap instead of replying.

Freddie moved around until she got comfortable, removed her new hat and placed it beside her, then tucked her face into that safe place beneath his chin where she felt like no one could get her. “I like it here,” she told him.

“Oh yeah?”

“Mh-hm,” she hummed her agreement. “Feels safe.”

Rosie didn’t say anything to this, just pressed a gentle kiss to her head.

They sat in silence for a while, each thinking different things, before Freddie sighed and sat up until she could look into Rosie’s face. “I had a glass of lemonade which I left back there,” she informed him.

Rosie laughed. “You wanna go back and get it?”

Freddie nodded.

“Alright,” he decided.

“But I want to sit outside,” she added. “I don’t want all my new w/ops asking me questions, or all the new airmen asking me to dance, or to run into Millie. I want to sit with the stars.”

“Alright,” Rosie agreed once more.

“Will you sit with the stars with me?”

“Absolutely.”

“We’ll have to pick up Meatball first,” Freddie went on. “I feel bad that I left him for so long.”

“Meatball is very welcome to join us,” Rosie assured her.

Freddie grinned. “Oh, I wasn’t asking for your permission. I was just preparing you in case he tries to sit in your lap.”

Rosie tipped his head back and laughed. “Right,” he conceded. “What’s that thing people say about dogs adopting the traits of their owners?”

Freddie let out a loud, abrupt laugh and hit him lightly on the shoulder. “Shut up!”

“What? It’s not true?” Rosie teased, his eyes flicking down to where she was clearly still sitting in his lap.

Freddie rolled her eyes. “No, it’s true. It’s just impolite to say it.”

Rosie smirked. “Sorry, Fred.”

“Yeah,” she replied. “Me too. I’ve let you get entirely too comfortable. I’m wearing the trousers around here, Rosenthal.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Rosie acquiesced with a joking salute.

Freddie patted his curls, just because she wanted to. One day, she thought, she’d be brave enough to run her fingers through them. Today, at least she got to touch them. “Good,” she approved. “Now let’s go. I want to sit on the grass before the sprinklers get us again.”

#watm #my writing #mota #hbo war #masters of the air #masters of the air x oc #masters of the air fanfic #masters of the air fanfiction #rosie rosenthal #robert rosie rosenthal #rosie rosenthal x oc #rosie rosenthal fanfic #rosie rosenthal fanfiction #hbo war x oc

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cetaitlaverite · 20 days

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Why All This Music?

Masters of the Air - Rosie Rosenthal x OC

A/N: i'm back!! it's been a while since i've written anything, so i'm both excited and a little bit nervous about all this, but i thought i'd share it all the same. without further adieu, i'm incredibly pleased to introduce you to freddie, the latest of my loves. i hope you'll love her too <3

(the link to the masterlist is here)

01. Hotshot Wireless Operators

The evening was hot, the air was thick, and Freddie was blushing just as much because of the humidity as because of the attention.

She had been back at RAF Thorpe Abbotts for all of a day after her three days of leave and already she was being lorded as a hero. Secretly, she thought the reason for the celebrations was more because of the relief to have something worth celebrating than it was because of her actual achievement, but regardless all of the WAAFs in her section had their dress uniforms on, their hair pressed into pristine curls, and their arms around Freddie’s shoulders as they steered her in the direction of the officers’ club, as though a measly three days back home in Oxford had made her forget.

Warm, excited voices were insistent in her ears, different sets of hands tugging at her jacket or her curls or her hands, vying for her attention. She’d never felt like more of a celebrity.

“- going to be so excited when they hear, Freddie! You’re going to get a promotion to be sure!” one of the girls, Paddy, was exclaiming.

“Then you’ll be a flight officer!” added Amy, sharing a grin with Paddy. “Really, you should be a squadron officer - goodness knows you’re far more qualified than Jones is - but how fancy does ‘Flight Officer Leroy’ sound?”

Freddie shared a look with Millie, close on her left hip as always, and had to look at the grass in front of her so she wouldn’t laugh. The lack of light because of the blackout made it difficult to see anything, much less the dark ground ahead of her, so she focused on what might as well have been the abyss beneath her feet and let the conversation carry on without her.

“If she gets promoted, Freddie’ll be a translator, not a wireless operator anymore, so I don’t suppose she’ll be with us at all, girls,” Millie said as gently as she was able, offering a conciliatory smile to Paddy and Amy.

“But you’ll still be at Thorpe Abbotts, won’t you, Freddie?” questioned a timid voice from the back of the group.

Freddie turned to find Emma, their newest addition, freshly eighteen and conscripted to the role of aircraftwoman second class. She was as shy as they came and made a habit of making herself invisible, but Freddie couldn’t deny her fondness for the newest WAAF in their ranks.

Freddie offered her a tiny smile, hoping it was maybe just a little bit reassuring. “I’ve not heard anything about a promotion at all yet, Emma, so all of this is just conjecture.”

“Are you girls planning on making a night of this walk? Jesus Christ!” called a loud voice from far up ahead, standing in the doorway of the officers’ club. “We said we’d get here for 2000 hours yet you lot have taken damn near half an hour just to walk here!”

Millie laughed, completely unashamed, and called back, “What, have you got somewhere you need to be after this, Jem?”

In spite of her heckling, Millie looped her arm through Freddie’s and picked up the pace, forcing the rest of their group to do the same.

“Honestly,” Jem was tutting when they got within hearing distance. “‘Let’s go out and celebrate!’ you all said, and then the only celebrating you look prepared to do is out on the lawns!”

“Oh, Jem, they’re excited!” Freddie appealed to her with a grin. “Let them be. There’s so little to be excited about these days.”

Jem rolled her eyes affectionately and pushed her way into the midst of the group, taking up her post on Freddie’s right while Millie retained the left.

“Well, we can all be excited inside, can’t we? Where there’s music and beer and fresh meat.” Alongside this last statement she wiggled her eyebrows.

At this, Millie perked right up. “Oh, yeah! I forgot you haven’t met the new crews yet, Fred. They came the day after you went on leave, which is such a shame, because that was also the day Dye made twenty-five. Anyway, we all met them in the officers’ bar and a couple aren’t too sore on the eyes.”

Freddie laughed. “Got your eye on any of them, Mils?”

Millie shot her a wink. “Of course.”

Freddie was still smiling widely when Jem pushed the door to the officers’ club open for them. All at once, a wave of warmth and chatter washed over her, bringing that flush back into her cheeks with full force, especially when Paddy and Amy started to cheer for her again. They had, it seemed, made it their mission to make sure absolutely everyone in the officers’ club knew that there was cause for celebration tonight and that the cause herself was among their ranks.

“Everybody clear away from the bar!” Paddy was calling in that thick Northern Irish drawl of hers - the one which, incidentally, had gifted her her nickname. “We have nothing short of a war hero in tow and we’re expecting a Victoria Cross in the post any day now!”

“Ladies!” called Bucky Egan, rising to his full height from where he’d been leaning on the bar. “There you are. We been missing you!”

“Looking this good takes time, Major,” Millie told him with a conspiratorial pat to his shoulder.

“Not for you, Millie - you wake up looking just like this, I bet,” cut in Benny DeMarco with an easy smirk.

“Think about what I look like when I wake up often, do you, Benny?” Millie wondered around a roll of her eyes and a poorly concealed grin.

“Every second since the moment I met you,” he replied with a wink.

Millie laughed. “Noted, Benny. Noted.”

“So who’s your war hero?” wondered Buck Cleven, leaning back lazily against the bar.

“Yeah,” added Bucky. “And why do we gotta clear the bar for him?”

“For her,” Jem corrected, looking like she was ready to pull up her sleeves and start elbowing her way past them. “Freddie’s our war hero.”

“Or heroine, I suppose,” added Amy.

Freddie was already blushing furiously, but when the eyes of all of the airmen gathered, both those who had engaged in the conversation and those who hadn’t, swivelled to her, expectantly awaiting an explanation of what she’d done to earn her title, her cheeks felt like they were on fire. “It was nothing, really -”

“It was not nothing!” Paddy exclaimed immediately. And with that she leaped into a dramatic retelling. “After a dogfight, a German fighter must’ve gotten himself disoriented. He was flying over England but had convinced himself it was France. When I started receiving him on the radio I had no idea what to do, of course, and I started panicking and damn near started crying because I was so scared. But then Freddie - who, it turns out, speaks perfect German - took the receiver from me and started directing this German fighter in like she does it everyday. Cool and calm as you like, she guides him in, and then the second he’s down we’ve got him caught and captured and his plane is being taken in for analysis and now we have the newest German fighter in our hands to find out how it works.”

Amy was grinning and she leaped in to add, “Say what you like, but our RAF fighters are going to owe a lot to our Freddie when they know how to dogfight these new German Messers because we have one of them.”

“Yeah, well, we’re hoping we’ll know a lot about the German Air Force in general when the brass have finished interrogating the Jerry who fell for the whole charade,” commented Jem with a wry grin.

“Well,” started Bucky, with a wide grin of his own, clapping his hands together, “seems like maybe you really do need a drink, Fred.”

Freddie’s eyes had long since found the floor, embarrassed by the fussing, and only now did she look up to shrug.

“No,” Millie said, pointing a finger at Bucky. “I’m buying her first drink, not you.”

“Millie, you’re so mean to me,” Bucky teased her.

“Go find a corner and cry about it,” Millie replied easily. Turning to Freddie as she started to push through the gathered airmen, she asked, “Beer?”

“Lemonade,” Freddie corrected.

Millie scowled. “No.”

“What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“I mean ‘no’,” Millie answered steadily. “I’m not buying you lemonade.”

“Why not?!”

“You can have beer or you can have wine.”

“I’ll buy it myself, then.”

“Freddie,” Millie said slowly, placing both hands on her shoulders very seriously, “you are not allowed to drink lemonade tonight. Okay? I’m getting you a beer.”

“But I don’t want beer,” Freddie protested, frowning.

“Fred, you can’t drink lemonade,” Bucky re-entered the conversation.

Freddie turned to him with raised eyebrows and arms crossed. “Why not? Buck doesn’t drink!”

“Yeah, and it’s my least favourite thing about him,” Bucky countered.

“John, leave her alone -” Buck attempted to chastise him.

Millie gave Freddie a meaningful look before she turned away from her and pushed through the crowd to make a space for herself at the bar.

“I just want lemonade,” Freddie muttered, crossing her arms across her chest.

“Freddie, tell me you’re not trying to drink lemonade again,” Jem cut in.

Freddie threw her hands up in exasperation. “What’s wrong with lemonade?!”

“You’re practically a war hero, Freddie - you have to drink beer! That’s what all the hotshot pilots drink when they come back from some flash mission -”

Bucky cut right across Paddy, “That’s what all of us ‘hotshot pilots’ drink all the time, Paddy.”

Freddie turned to them both with her chin tilted up. “Well, I am not a hotshot pilot.”

“Just a hotshot wireless operator, right, Fred?” Bucky teased.

“Exactly,” Freddie agreed. “And hotshot wireless operators drink lemonade.”

“No, we don’t,” Jem laughed.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” spoke a voice from behind Freddie. It wasn’t a voice she recognised, and she liked to think with all of her accumulated experience talking to both the pilots and the radio operators over the radio to get them safely out of the base and then back again she recognised voices rather well.

Turning, she found a pair of earnest blue eyes and a shy smile tilted above a well-groomed moustache and a proffered glass.

“Hi,” Freddie greeted softly in what was almost a chirp.

“Hi,” the man - one of the new pilots, by the looks of his insignia - replied. He shook his head a little bit, as though to clear it. “I hope you don’t mind, ma’am, but I couldn’t help overhearing your conversation and I thought - well, here’s your lemonade.” He offered the glass to her again.

He was handsome, this pilot who had bought her lemonade when no one else would. Not necessarily handsome in a film star, striking way, but in a gentle, endearing way. The kind of handsome which made her heart flutter instead of stop - which was quite lovely, really, because a lot of things made her heart stop these days and none of them were good.

“Oh,” Freddie mumbled, accepting the glass of lemonade from him. It was icy cold to the touch but his fingers were warm where they grazed lightly against hers. “Thank you,” she told him.

He smiled again and her breath got a little bit stuck in her throat. “Nothing at all, ma’am.”

She wasn’t sure what to say next, didn’t want him to leave but didn’t want to force him to stay. But when he inclined his head in farewell first to her, then presumably to Buck and Bucky still stood leaning against the bar beside her, she was so desperate to get him to linger, even if just for a few more words, that she blurted, “I’m Freddie.” Her voice came out sounding high pitched and girlish to her own ears. She wanted so badly to grasp at the air and shove the words back into her mouth that she might even have given it a try if he hadn’t smiled at her again.

“Nice to meet you, Freddie,” he answered her. “I’m Rosie.”

“Rosie,” she repeated with a shy sort of smile. “That’s a sweet name.”

Rosie smiled wider. She had dimples. “Thank you, ma’am. Comes from my last name - Rosenthal.”

Freddie nodded, stuck on his smile. “You don’t have to call me ‘ma’am’,” she replied after a beat in which she realised she was probably supposed to be speaking. “Just Freddie is fine. That’s how everyone knows me.”

“Alright,” Rosie conceded. “Freddie it is.”

Freddie couldn’t seem to look away from his eyes. She was sure she’d never seen eyes so blue. Even in the warm, low lighting of the officers’ bar they were somehow still glowing, bright and kind and alive.

“So, uh,” Rosie started, with a certain degree of awkwardness.

Freddie forced her eyes away from his, conscious she must have been staring.

“They said you were on leave?” Rosie finished, fiddling with the pint of beer in his hand.

“Yes,” Freddie confirmed, fiddling with the straw in her drink to give herself something to focus on other than the beautiful, striking blue of the pair of eyes currently awaiting her answer. “I went home for three days, to Oxford.”

“That must’ve been nice,” he replied. He hated how he suddenly had so very little to say. She must have thought he was so, so boring.

Freddie couldn’t help it. She giggled at the awkwardness.

“Yes,” she replied again. “Yes, it was wonderful. Strange to be home, to be sure - I haven’t visited since Christmas - but it was especially lovely to see my dogs again. I don’t get any letters from them, see.”

Rosie chuckled lightly, nodding along with her, relieved at the release of the uncertainty. “Right,” he said. “They’re not big on writing letters, then?”

“They’re dogs of few words,” Freddie agreed with a grin.

“How many do you have?” he questioned next.

“Dogs?” Freddie wondered. “Two. The big one’s Bruno and the little one’s Earnie, both boys. A German Shepherd and a Westie.”

“What are they like?”

Freddie’s eyes glinted. “Trouble.” She loved talking about her dogs.

“I always wanted a dog,” Rosie confided in her, tilting his head to the side and slightly down to let him meet her eyes more easily. Well, more easily for him; the increased eye contact was tortuous for her. “But where I’m from, in Brooklyn, we always lived in an apartment. No pets allowed.”

Freddie gasped. “That’s tragic.”

Rosie grinned. “I know. Someone oughta fix that rule.”

She sipped on her lemonade, nodding, contemplating. Instinctively, her eyes found the floor.

Rosie watched her, tapping his fingers against his glass of beer.

He opened his mouth to say something more - desperate to say something, anything, really, that might get her to smile again. Those dimples of hers - if he hadn’t signed up to go to war already he knew he would’ve enlisted just on their behalf.

But whatever he was about to say never made it out. It was for the best, probably, since he couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t have been something incredibly forward, some grand statement about her startling prettiness which she was bound to have heard a million times before. Instead, he was swiftly cut off by Millie, returning from the bar with a pint of beer in each hand. “Fred, I got your beer, and you are going to like it, god damn it, even if I have to pour it down your throat myself.”

Freddie flushed and turned to Millie, conscious of Rosie’s eyes on her profile, and watched as realisation dawned on her best friend’s face. “Oh.”

“I have lemonade,” Freddie said. She wanted to punch herself in the face for that one. All that progress she’d made in proving herself decidedly not a weirdo and she was right back where she started.

Millie laughed, her eyes flicking between Freddie and Rosie. “Is that right? And who do I have to blame for it?”

“That would be me, ma’am,” Rosie answered, and Freddie noticed a glint in his eye.

“Rosie,” Millie replied with a tut, proving Freddie’s assumption correct that the two had already met. “Now why would you do that? You’ll only encourage her!”

Rosie shook his head with a light little laugh and Freddie’s chest deflated. “Got your eye on any of them, Mils?” she recalled herself saying not thirty minutes before. And Millie had replied, “Of course.” And why wouldn’t she have her eye on him? Why shouldn’t she? If Millie deserved anything in her life it was a Rosie. True, Freddie didn’t know him all that well, but that earnestness in his eyes, that uncertainty with which he’d approached her just to do something kind, told her everything she needed to know about the type of man he was. A type of man worthy of her Millie.

In front of her, the jovial conversation between Rosie and Millie raged on. “I just figured,” Rosie was saying, explaining why he had bought Freddie’s lemonade, “war heroes should get to choose what they have to drink, otherwise what’s the point of being one?”

Millie laughed along with Rosie’s joke and Freddie’s eyes sought Benny. “Benny,” she started, quiet, and that was all she needed to say.

“Over in that corner,” Benny told her with a kind but secret smile, inclining his head towards a darkened corner with an unoccupied table close to the wall and a Siberian Husky lying quietly beneath one of the chairs.

Freddie let out all of her breath and gave him a smile. “Thank you,” she told him quietly, and slipped away while Millie and Rosie were still joking about whatever it was they were joking about.

Freddie found refuge with Benny’s dog, Meatball, often when she felt overwhelmed. Meatball was a nice mix of her two dogs back home in having the pale coat of her West Highland White Terrier and the large stature of her German Shepherd and he always served to make her feel a little bit more settled when the world felt just a little bit too unstable. He always accepted her kindly and with little fuss, too. Perhaps he was used to her by now or perhaps he simply appreciated her attention when those who would usually give it to him were off dancing or searching for dance partners or engaging in all kinds of drunken revelry.

Freddie forwent sitting atop the chair Meatball had claimed as his shelter and instead sat beside him on the floor. The table and chairs were pristine and untouched; she figured the last time human feet had ventured to this part of the room was when the cleaner had passed through earlier.

“I’m feeling overwhelmed again,” she confessed to Meatball, fingers curling gently into the hair around his scruff.

Meatball spared her a quick glance before resting his head in her lap. Freddie smiled softly and stroked over his head.

“Thanks for letting me share your little corner,” she added. A place she felt she better belonged. Better to take refuge in dark corners and let the others have a chance, she told herself. She’d already had hers, no matter that she’d lost it.

Freddie didn’t realise she had an audience. Over by the bar, several pairs of eyes had watched her go and were now watching her fuss over Meatball.

Rosie’s eyes sought Millie’s and she smiled sadly, shaking her head. “It wasn’t anything you said,” she reassured him. “Or anything you did. You just need to be patient with our Fred.”

“She’s not one for romance, is all,” Bucky put in, halfway through turning back to the bar to order another beer. “Wouldn’t take it personal if I was you, Rosie.”

Jem scoffed, loud and outraged and all but infuriated. “She is one for romance. What a thing to say!” When Bucky didn’t turn back to her, she grabbed him by the lapel and forced him to. “It’s not my place to say why she is the way she is but maybe you’d know if you hadn’t been so dismissive the first time she turned you down for a dance.”

“She turns down everyone for a dance,” Bucky dismissed Jem. “I, for one, ain’t losing sleep over it.”

Jem stared at him coldly and Millie let out a sigh. “Sometimes,” Millie said, and all of a sudden she sounded exhausted, “you Americans would do well to remember there was a war going on before you entered it.”

“And what the fuck’s that supposed to mean, Mils?” Bucky demanded.

Millie turned cool, bored eyes on him. “You’re a smart guy, Bucky. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” With that, she crossed the room to Freddie, both beers still in hand, and sat down on the floor beside her. Wordlessly, she commenced sipping at each beer in turn and listened to whatever it was Freddie had to say, while the rest of the group turned back to each other and tried to talk about something else.

#my writing #watm #mota #masters of the air #rosie rosenthal #rosie rosenthal x oc #masters of the air x oc #masters of the air fanfic #masters of the air fanfiction

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