Chapter Text
Matt had sworn to himself, sworn to Evie, that he wouldn’t touch a bottle of alcohol for the rest of his life. Had sworn on his mother’s necklace and everything, which was the most precious object to him in the world. Yet there he sat in the officer’s club, tapping the bartop for another pour of vodka that burned his esophagus on its way down. Matt’s right lower abdomen ached, but he ignored it dutifully, nursing the small dribble of vodka that lingered at the bottom of the glass.
“Matthew,” Buck greeted, his tone cool and detached, despite Matt knowing he very much was not that in the slightest. He ordered a ginger beer, then rubbed his forefinger against his thumb on his left hand. “You know you’re not supposed to be drinking that.”
“Then what am I supposed to be drinking, Major?” Matt replied coldly, swallowing the dregs of vodka, tapping for another pour. His vision was already swimming pleasantly, distracting from the ache in his abdomen–and his chest, which had grown to accommodate a wide open void. He had lost one best friend, a second best friend, a father figure, and a brother figure all in the span of three months. Despite not being directly at fault, death enclosed Matt like a funeral shroud, a constant companion. The title was spit out bitterly, a formality that brushed off proximity, the affection that had formed between them. “What the hell you doing at the bar, anyway?”
“Checking on you,” Buck responded honestly, swigging his ginger beer. “Haven’t seen you since…” The words didn’t need to be uttered, too sour to linger on the tongues of those already plagued by the truth of the matter.
“Yeah. Don’t wanna be found, I s’pose.” Matt replied haughtily, clicking his teeth together as he shot another round of vodka down his throat, his lips puckering at the taste. “Though, if you wanted to find me, you should have known to look here first. You sure that’s what you really wanted?” Matt turned his half lidded gaze on Buck, his tongue dragging across his upper teeth underneath his lip. The wording was slightly confrontational, as though Matt wanted to scare Buck away, wanted to push him off to the point of isolation. He savored the sting of loneliness, the reminder of his failure.
Buck raised a brow, his lips pursed into a thin line. He knew exactly what Matt was pulling, and did not appreciate the effort. “Listen, kid. It’s as little your fault as it is mine that that plane went down. We weren’t here, and sure, we should have been, but it’s not like we could have predicted it. Planes go down every mission, never them. It’s just–their luck ran out, okay? And they’ll be back, they just crashed somewhere in enemy territory, they are not dead. You hear me?” It sounded like Buck was trying to convince more than just Matt with how urgent his phrasing sounded.
Before Matt could respond, Rosie entered the Officer’s Club, his expression harried, panting as though he had run across base. He might have. Despite the tension between Rosie and Matt during their first encounter at Dye’s party, nothing had happened since. Rosie seemed eager to get close to Matt, but, as ever, Matt was closed off to the idea of intimacy of any kind with anyone. Especially after the crash–he’d barely eaten, hadn’t really spoken to anyone, and ignored any attempts of comfort. Rosie hadn’t been deterred, more stubborn than any person that Matt had ever met.
“Rosenthal?” Buck voiced, his tone pitched a bit higher, less friendly. Afraid to let others in just as much as Matt but for different reasons. They waited for Rosie to catch his breath, Matt downing another shot in the meantime, his body shifting side to side unsteadily on the barstool. Rosie leaned against the bartop, his forearms growing sticky from the contact, as he struggled to catch his breath.
“I….sorry,” Rosie coughed to stimulate a more natural breathing pattern, his cheeks rosy from exertion. “I was talking to the XO, and he told me that some airborne units are going to be dropping into where they believe a prisoner of war camp to be after a primary mission in France in the summer. Something about morale. If we transfer to the Paratroops, we could be a part of this drop. A special request from experienced Army Air Corps members. How could they say no?”
“I can think of a few reasons,” Buck replied, his teeth catching his tongue in a sharp hiss unbefitting of him. Matt’s shattered mind couldn’t think straight enough to predict exactly what Buck was talking about, but he assumed it involved the fact that the brass would hardly want to take the opportunity to lessen the manpower of the airforce. They needed all the bullet sponges they could get, and that would mean a tight grip on two of their best pilots–Buck and Rosie. Matt, however, was far more replaceable.
“I’ll do it. They don’t need a two-bit navigator anyway. As long as the Army will take me, I’ll go.” Matt swallowed his tenth glass of whiskey and stood, wobbling, so unstable that he had to wrap his arm around the back of the stool he’d just slid off of. Rosie moved to his side, while Buck’s arm jutted out to stabilize him. Matt shot a glare at Buck, entirely undeserved, pushing away from both men with a determined pose that was far lessened in threat by the fact that he was so unbalanced it looked like one swift breeze would knock him straight on his ass. “I don’t need either of you babying me. I’m grown. I’m going to find them–or die trying.”
Matt would be a liar if he claimed that he cared about which outcome was achieved. He bordered on suicidal most of the time, believing that he was entirely worthless unless he served a material purpose. The emotion only intensified the more isolated he was, the more he listened to that unkind voice at the back of his mind. Matt brushed past Buck and shouldered through Rosie bodily, throwing his glass to the floor as he exited the club. Rosie bent down to collect the glass in an open palm, ignoring the occasional slices in his skin. “You aren’t going to let him go alone, right?” Rosie questioned softly, his eyes burning with unshed tears.
“‘Course not. Gonna set his ass straight, then we’ll jump together.” Buck replied, swallowing a heady gulp of ginger beer, his tastebuds tingling with satisfaction. “You coming, Ros?" It was the first time that Buck had referred to Rosie by his nickname, even shortened for effect. Rosie perked up, his eyes brightening in the dim light of the club.
“I wouldn’t miss it, Major.”
“You gonna pull yourself together, Matthew, or you gonna be too much of a mess to save your best friend?” Buck demanded, his voice as stern as it was midflight and he had to focus or risk crashing and killing all nine people in his charge. Matt didn’t often hear such a tone from Buck outside of missions, and the intensity of his stare threatened to boil him alive with guilt.
Cold sweat rolled down Matt’s brow, his lower lip trembling. His head pounded so hard he could barely hear the words falling from Buck’s mouth, bent over with his arm wrapped around his middle as he fought the urge to vomit. Matt hated to throw up, and he in no way felt the desire to burn his esophagus for what felt like the thirtieth time. “I’m tryin’, Buck, I’m tryin’...can’t, uh, can’t think clearly.” He murmured, his eyes shifting from Buck to another figure looming behind his crouched form.
Buck wrapped his forefinger and thumb around Matt’s chin, forcing his sluggish gaze to those typically gentle blues. “Matty, I know you’re trying here, but you’ve gotta push through. Our family needs us, right? They need you. So keep breathing through this. It’s gonna be worse ‘fore it gets better.”
Matt nodded numbly, his head lolling to the side as the figure behind Buck stepped around him and stood closer, leaning down to Matt’s level. Her dark curls cascaded down Buck’s shoulder, though he didn’t appear to notice. Which would make sense, since Dallas Dixon had died months ago and had no real reason to be standing in front of Matt right now, aside from the fact that withdrawal hallucinations were a known occurrence.
“Matty, you know that the alcohol doesn’t help you, don’t ya?” Dallas chastised, her fingertips brushing non corporally along the line of Matt’s jaw, her wrist passing through Buck’s where it held Matt’s chin. Matt’s eyes watered, his mouth dry and his lips flaky. He opened his mouth to respond to either Dallas or Buck, but couldn’t form a single thought aside from a desperate, aching sorrowful sob. “Poor boy. You never were the toughest, but I remember ya taking a lot more punches ‘fore goin’ down. Ya gonna let alcohol win, like it won with your daddy? Ya wanna be like your daddy, Matty?”
Matt shook his head, bile burning the back of his throat on its way up. He bent over into the trash can Buck had procured and vomited up whatever remained in his stomach and more, stomach acid singeing his tastebuds. He coughed harshly, clouded eyes gazing up at Dallas over the rim of the can. “Ya ain’t a thing like your daddy, Matty. It’ll be okay. It’s almost over. Just sleep.” Her incorporeal fingers ran through his hair, sending an odd shiver down his spine.
Matt’s eyes fluttered closed, his lashes heavy with sweat, his lips parting in a smooth exhale. Buck released a sigh of relief, wrapping his arms around Matt’s neck and upper back to pull him back onto the mattress. He turned Matt’s head to the side in case he vomited, not wanting him to suffocate in his sleep. With a soft sigh, Buck reclined on the bed opposite Matt, blue eyes scanning Matt’s trembling form before they closed, the hope being a lick of sleep prior to the sun rising on the horizon.
SEPTEMBER 17TH, 1944
The rattling of the metal casing of the C-47 was practically shaking Matt to the depths of his bones, his hip knocking against Rosie’s in a way that was absolutely not a distraction and one could never get him to admit it, thank you very much. Buck sat at the front of the row, a tuft of his flaxen colored hair poking out of his helmet. While Buck stared out of the open doorway of the plane in a way that would push Matt’s anxiety past the breaking point, Matt scanned the assembled Paratroopers across from them. Most seemed as anxious or airsick as Matt was, holding onto necklace chains, gripping their own trousers or rifles or packs, staring at the floor or the sky outside.
Matt reached for Buck as the C-47 buffeted violently, his nails digging into Buck’s forearm. Buck knocked his helmet against Matt’s sideways, the clank of the metal against metal violently loud but surprisingly pleasant as a means of distraction. Matt’s brain bounced in his skull so successfully he was free of all thought for several moments.
The man directly across from Matt, Julian, if he remembered correctly, stared at the grip with a laser focus. After a beat, wherein Matt arched his brow in preparation for some kind of question or comment that would undoubtedly irritate the hell out of him, Julian spoke. “Are you two an item?” Rosie stiffened beside Matt while Buck snorted, shaking his head in amusement. Matt stared blankly at Julian for a moment until he finally felt like he’d extended the awkward silence as long as it was due for such a question.
“Buck? No. He’s like an older brother to me, or a father. No, I’m unattached at the moment. Unless you count a desperate need for airsickness pills followed by a shot of vodka.” Matt replied, his tone far more jovial than the comment deserved, which left Julian glancing awkwardly between them. “I’m joking. Mostly.”
“You better be,” Buck muttered under his breath, clearly displeased at the reference to alcohol abuse when he had only gotten Matt fully clean a couple of months before. Shakily, at best. Rosie appeared to relax, as if he actually believed there was a chance that Matt and Buck were together. As if it wasn’t extremely obvious that Buck was head over heels for Bucky, less obvious to the man himself who avoided intense emotions like the plague.
“I ain’t mean no harm by the question. It’s the proximity ‘nd all.” Julian offered his open palms as sacrifice, hoping to show that he was telling the truth.
“No one here is offended by it. At least not in the sort of way I believe you’re implying.” Matt replied, his gaze shifting to the copper haired man sitting next to Julian. Tall and lanky, with a very prominent nose that really suited his features. Babe, he was called. Matt only remembered because of how specific a nickname it was, reminding him of the baseball star Babe Ruth his father loved to bet on. “What about you? Are you two an item?”
“God no, Julian’s just a kid. Christ, what you take me for? A cradle robber?” Babe spit out, seeming to be vehemently opposed to such a thought.
“You’re only a year older than me for Christsakes!” Julian retorted, shoving Babe’s shoulder. “He’s just pickin’ a random excuse. Ya see, he has a crush on this mopey medic with these blue eyes he keeps callin’ ‘soulful’ or some poetic shit like that.”
“Shut the hell up, Julian!” Babe shoved Julian back, the conversation devolving into a shove fight that just inspired laughter from the three Air Corps members.
“See that is why I’m single. I don’t want to have to shove people because I’m nervous about my crush. It’s so childish.” Matt released Buck’s arm, adjusting his helmet atop his head.
“Yeah, okay. Act like we don’t know.” Buck muttered, his expression betraying amusement in the upward quirk of his lips.
“What the hell are you talking about, Buck? You’re so annoying!” Matt shoved Buck hard enough that he had to grip the lip of the bench, his eyes narrowed in incredulity.
“Are you twelve or what, Matthew?”
Rosie sighed, leaning back against the innards of the C-47, scooting just far enough from Matt that he wouldn’t get any of the blowback from the wrestling men. “Hashem, give me patience.”