Chapter 13: A Colonel's Burden
The day was a trial of focus. Every drill, every shouted order, every minute of polishing boots or scrubbing latrines was just a countdown. The number 2300 glowed in Bucky’s mind like the radium dial on a watch face. His body felt different. The ache from the gearshift was a purple shadow on his hip. The deeper, lingering soreness from the night before, and the night before that, was a constant, low hum. It didn’t feel like damage. It felt like a record, etched into his skin and muscle, of where Dante had been.
He caught glimpses of him. Dante on the parade ground, a statue of authority, his voice cutting the air. Dante in the mess hall, sitting alone with a report, utterly detached. There was no flicker of recognition, no secret glance. It was perfect discipline. It made the secret feel heavier, more real.
As 2200 approached, the camp settled into the murmuring quiet of night. Bucky moved with a purpose that wouldn’t attract notice. He wasn’t skulking; he was a soldier going about an unspecified task. The officer’s quarters were a separate, quieter block. A single bulb glowed over the entrance. His heart was a loud, stupid thing in his chest as he climbed the wooden steps.
He found the door. Third on the left. He raised his hand, knuckles hovering an inch from the painted wood. Before he could knock, the door opened inward.
Dante stood there, backlit by a single desk lamp. He was out of his uniform jacket. His shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbows, revealing the intricate ink snaking up his forearms. He looked Bucky up and down, his expression unreadable, then stepped aside.
“Get in.”
Bucky stepped over the threshold. Dante closed the door behind him, the click of the latch final. The room was exactly as described: sparse, functional, smelling of gun oil, stale coffee, and something faintly smoky and masculine that was just Dante. The narrow bunk. The cracked mirror. The desk littered with maps and a whiskey bottle. Bucky’s eyes scanned it all, landing on the lone framed photo. A woman with dark hair, smiling softly, her image a dusty artifact from another life.
“You’re staring,” Dante said. He leaned back against the door, crossing his arms. The dark rose on his knuckles seemed to pulse in the low light.
“Just… taking it in.”
“It’s a room.” Dante pushed off the door. He walked to the desk, poured two fingers of amber liquid into a tin cup. He didn’t offer one to Bucky. He drank it down in one go, his throat working. He set the cup down with a sharp tap. “You been thinking about it?”
“Yes.”
“What part?”
“All of it.” Bucky’s voice was steadier than he felt. “The jeep. Last night. The wall.”
A ghost of a smile touched Dante’s mouth. “The wall was exceptionally stupid.”
“You started it.”
“I finish what I start.” Dante moved then. He didn’t rush. He just crossed the small space until he was in front of Bucky, crowding him. He was so tall. Bucky had to tilt his head back. Dante’s hand came up, his thumb brushing roughly over Bucky’s bottom lip. “You’re not confused anymore.”
It wasn’t a question. Bucky held his gaze. “No, sir.”
“What are you, then?”
“Hungry.”
The word hung between them, raw and honest. Dante’s icy eyes darkened. He grabbed a handful of Bucky’s shirt at the chest and pulled him in, kissing him with a brutal, consuming intensity. It wasn’t like the kisses outside the barracks. This was deeper, slower, more deliberate. Dante tasted of whiskey and possession. His tongue mapped Bucky’s mouth like it was territory to be claimed.
Bucky’s hands came up, clutching at Dante’s shoulders, the hard muscle under the cotton. Dante walked him backward until his knees hit the edge of the bunk. He broke the kiss, breathing hard. “Strip.”
Bucky’s fingers fumbled with his buttons. Dante watched, his arms crossed again, a commander observing an exercise. Under that gaze, every revealed inch of skin felt like a revelation. Soon, Bucky stood naked, the cool air of the room raising goosebumps. He was hard, his cock aching and full.
Dante’s gaze was a physical weight, roaming over him. “Turn around.”
Bucky turned, facing the bare wall. He heard the soft rustle of Dante undressing. A belt buckle. The slide of a zipper. Fabric pooling on the floor. Then Dante was behind him, his big, warm, naked body not touching him, but Bucky could feel the heat radiating from him.
“You see the mark?” Dante’s voice was a low murmur by his ear. His fingertip traced the bite on Bucky’s shoulder, a perfect, bruising crescent. “My mark. You’re carrying it all day, in front of everyone. You know that?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” Dante’s hands landed on his hips, his grip firm. He leaned in, his cock, thick and heavy, pressing against the cleft of Bucky’s ass. “Now get on the bed. On your hands and knees.”
Bucky climbed onto the thin mattress. The wool blanket scratched his palms. He heard the click of a cap. The smell of the gun oil filled the small space, metallic and sharp. Dante’s slick fingers found him, circling his entrance, then pressing in without ceremony. One, then two, working him open with a ruthless efficiency that was more preparation for a mission than an act of intimacy.
“You’re getting used to me,” Dante observed, his voice detached as his fingers scissored deep. “Opened up nice and easy.”
Bucky pushed back against the intrusion, a groan trapped in his chest. The burn was familiar, a welcome stretch. Dante added a third finger, curling them, and Bucky’s vision sparked white as they brushed the spot inside that made his legs tremble.
“There it is,” Dante murmured, a note of dark satisfaction in his voice. He withdrew his fingers.
Bucky heard him slick himself up, the wet, deliberate sound. Then the blunt, hot pressure was back, not at his entrance, but dragging up and down the crease, smearing the oil.
“Tell me you want it.”
“I want it.”
“Louder.”
“I want your cock, Dante. I want you to fuck me. Please.”
The plea did it. Dante braced one hand between Bucky’s shoulder blades and pushed him down until his cheek was pressed to the blanket. He positioned himself and drove forward in one relentless, burying thrust.
The air left Bucky’s lungs in a punched-out gasp. He was filled, stretched, pinned. Dante was balls-deep, his hips flush against Bucky’s ass. He held there, a statue of perfect penetration, letting Bucky feel every inch, the overwhelming fullness, the hard heat of him.
“Christ, you feel good,” Dante gritted out, the words strained. He began to move.
This was different from the jeep, from the wall. The bunk allowed for a longer, deeper stroke. Dante set a punishing, rhythmic pace, each withdrawal almost complete before he slammed back home. The frame of the bed began to knock a dull, rhythmic protest against the wall. Thump. Thump. Thump. Dante’s hand slid from Bucky’s back to tangle in his hair, fisting it, pulling his head back to arch his spine. The angle changed, and each thrust now hammered directly into his prostate.
Sensation detonated along Bucky’s nerves. He was moaning, a continuous, broken sound into the blanket. He was hard and leaking beneath him, his cock swinging with each of Dante’s drives. He was beyond words, beyond thought. He was a vessel for this feeling, this all-consuming fuck.
“That’s it,” Dante grunted, his own breath coming in harsh gasps. He was losing his rhythm, his control fracturing. “Take it. Take all of me. Your perfect, tight ass was made for this. For getting fucked raw by your Colonel.”
His language grew filthier, more inventive, a filthy stream of obscenities that painted a picture of ownership and debasement that only made Bucky wilder. Dante released his hair and wrapped a thick arm around Bucky’s chest, hauling him up onto his knees, back against Dante’s front. The new position drove Dante even deeper. Bucky’s head lolled back on Dante’s shoulder.
Dante’s hand snaked down, fingers wrapping around Bucky’s leaking cock. He jerked him in time with his thrusts, a rough, perfect counter-rhythm. “You gonna come for me, recruit?” he snarled in his ear. “Gonna spill all over my hand like a cheap slut while I’m buried in your guts?”
The dual assault was too much. The coil in Bucky’s belly tightened, snapped. His orgasm ripped through him, violent and silent for a second before a ragged, shattered cry was torn from his throat. He pulsed over Dante’s fist, stripes of white painting the rough blanket below, his body clenching and fluttering around the hard cock still pistoning inside him.
The intense, rhythmic squeezing pulled Dante over the edge. He buried his face in Bucky’s neck, his hips stuttering. A raw, guttural groan vibrated against Bucky’s skin as he came, pumping his release deep inside in hot, flooding pulses. He held Bucky locked against him, both of them shuddering through the aftershocks.
Slowly, the world seeped back in. The smell of sex and gun oil. The knock of the bedframe against the wall. The sound of their ragged breathing.
Dante softened inside him, but didn’t pull out. His arm around Bucky’s chest loosened from a vise to an embrace. His lips moved against the sweat-damp skin of Bucky’s shoulder, near the bite mark. Bucky could feel the rapid hammer of Dante’s heart against his back.
For a long time, they stayed like that, joined in the quiet gloom. Dante finally shifted, withdrawing with a soft, wet sound. He guided Bucky down onto his side on the narrow bunk, then stretched out behind him, his big body curling around Bucky’s. His arm draped over Bucky’s waist. The warmth was shocking in its intimacy.
Bucky was boneless, wrung out. His mind was a blissful blank. He felt Dante nuzzle into the nape of his neck, inhale deeply.
“You can’t stay,” Dante said, his voice quiet, rough with use.
“I know.”
“Five minutes.”
“Okay.”
Dante’s hand splayed over Bucky’s stomach, possessive even now. Bucky watched the dust motes dance in the sliver of light from the desk lamp. He felt safe. It was the most dangerous feeling he’d ever had.
After a few minutes of silence, Dante sighed, a weary exhalation. He got up. Bucky heard the strike of a match, caught the acrid scent of cigarette smoke. He rolled over. Dante was standing by the desk, naked, smoking, looking down at the photo of the woman. His profile was grim.
Bucky sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bunk. He started gathering his clothes. Dressing felt like putting on a costume. Every movement reminded him of what they’d just done, the soreness a tender, secret trophy.
He stood, fully dressed, feeling awkward. Dante turned, leaning a hip against the desk. He took a drag of his cigarette, his eyes cataloging Bucky—the rumpled uniform, the flushed face, the dazed eyes.
“You’re a problem, Barnes,” Dante said, but there was no heat in it.
Bucky met his gaze. “You like problems, sir.”
A faint, real smile. “Maybe I do.” He nodded toward the door. “Go on. Different route. Stay in the shadows.”
Bucky went to the door. His hand was on the knob.
“Bucky.”
He turned. Dante had never used his first name before. Not like that.
Dante stared at him, the cigarette smoldering between his fingers. “2300. Tomorrow.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a promise, and a sentence. Bucky nodded. He slipped out into the cool night, closing the door softly on the man, the smoke, and the silent woman in the frame. He melted into the shadows, his body humming, his mind finally, perfectly quiet. He wasn’t confused. He was ruined. And he had never felt more alive.
And he had never felt more alive.
That aliveness felt like a target on his back the next morning. Dante ran them into the ground. It was a clear, crisp day that felt merciless under his command. Every drill was executed again, then again, the margins for error shrinking to nothing. He wasn’t shouting. His voice was a cold, sharp instrument that flayed them open with precision. “Sloppy. Again.” “You think that’s coordinated? Again.” “Your hesitation gets your squad killed. Again.”
Bucky’s muscles, already humming with a deep, secret fatigue, burned. His lungs ripped at the air. Beside him, the other recruits grunted and cursed under their breath, sweat stinging their eyes. Jericho ran another group fifty yards over, his own voice a bass-line rumble of urgency. The whole field was a theater of controlled desperation.
They assembled, finally, a line of heaving, dirt-streaked young men. Jericho walked the line first, his boots crunching on the gravel. He stopped in the center, his hands on his hips. “Look at you,” he said, his tone conversational, deadly. “You think this is hard? This is the goddamn playground. The minute you ship out, that softness you’re coddling right now?” He jabbed a finger at his own temple. “It gets people killed. Not just you. The man next to you. The family he writes to back in Ohio. You dull your edge by one degree, and you spin a web of consequences you can’t even imagine. You become a liability. A footnote in a condolence letter.”
The field was silent except for ragged breathing. Dante moved forward then, a shadow to Jericho’s substance. He stood beside his friend, his icy gaze sweeping over them. “Captain Jericho is being generous. A liability doesn’t get a letter. A liability gets forgotten, because remembering it is too painful for the men who have to live with the result of its failure.” He let that sit, a stone in each gut. “Your focus is not your own. It is a currency. You spend it wisely, or you bankrupt everyone who depends on you. Dismissed.”
The recruits stumbled away, a broken tide. Bucky turned with them, his body leaden. He felt Dante’s eyes. It wasn’t a look of recognition, but of assessment, prolonged by a fraction of a second. It was a ghost of a touch in the space between his shoulder blades. He didn’t dare glance back. He didn’t need to. He knew Jericho had seen it. The captain’s face, as Bucky chanced a look while trudging away, was still, his eyes fixed on Dante with a knowing, heavy concern.
2300 arrived like a reprieve and a sentence. The camp slept. Bucky’s path to the officer’s quarters was a map etched in his nerves. The door was unlocked.
Dante was already pouring whiskey. He didn’t speak. He just handed the tin cup to Bucky. Their fingers brushed. The liquor was cheap fire, but it was something to do. Dante watched him drink, then took the cup, his lips touching the same rim. He set it down. The ritual was different. The air was taut.
“Strip,” Dante said, the command quieter than usual, frayed.
They undressed each other this time, a slow, deliberate dismantling. Buttons. Belt buckles. Boots. The silence was a third presence in the room. When they were naked, Dante pushed him back onto the bunk, his mouth descending on Bucky’s with a hunger that felt like anger. He bit Bucky’s lower lip, sucked his tongue, hands gripping his hips hard enough to bruise.
He flipped Bucky onto his stomach. The gun oil was on the nightstand. Dante slicked himself with rough, hurried strokes, the sound obscenely loud. He didn’t prepare Bucky. He just spat into his palm, wiped it over Bucky’s entrance, and pressed the head of his cock against him. “Open up,” he growled, and pushed.
The burn was bright, searing. Bucky gasped, his fingers twisting in the blanket. Dante sheathed himself in one inexorable, stretching inch after inch, until he was fully seated, his body trembling with the effort of his control. He paused, buried to the hilt inside the tight, clenching heat. “Fuck,” he breathed, a shattered word.
Then he fucked him. It was relentless, a deep, driving pace that had no tenderness in it. It was possession, exorcism, a frantic mapping of a body he knew too well. The bed slammed into the wall. Dante’s hand fisted in Bucky’s hair, yanking his head back. “You take it,” he muttered, his voice raw. “You take this fucking cock. You love it, don’t you? Love getting used by me.”
“Yes,” Bucky choked out, the pleasure a sharp, building wire inside him, amplified by the rough treatment. “God, yes.”
Dante’s other hand snaked under him, calloused fingers wrapping around Bucky’s erection, jerking him in a brutal, perfect rhythm. The dual sensations catapulted Bucky forward. His climax was ripped from him, a silent, convulsing wave that left him shaking. Dante followed seconds after, his thrusts becoming erratic, jagged, as he emptied himself inside Bucky with a low, guttural groan that sounded almost like pain.
They collapsed, a tangle of sweat-slick limbs. The room smelled of sex, whiskey, and dread. Dante withdrew. He lay on his back, one arm thrown over his eyes. Bucky stared at the water-stained ceiling, the euphoria evaporating, leaving something hollow and cold in its place.
“This isn’t good,” Dante said to the ceiling. His voice was flat. “We can’t keep doing this.”
The words were a physical blow. Bucky swallowed. “I know.” It hurt, but he did know. The speech on the field today hadn’t been an abstraction. It was the wall closing in.
“We have to be careful. We have to cut back.” Dante lowered his arm, turning his head to look at Bucky. His blue eyes were stark in the gloom. “I don’t want you to get in trouble for my shit.”
Bucky turned onto his side to face him. The sincerity in Dante’s voice, the uncharacteristic admission of responsibility, cracked something open in his chest. “I want it too. It’s not just your shit, fuck, I think I—” He cut himself off, the words too big, too dangerous to speak into existence.
Dante went still. “You what?”
“Nothing, sir.” Bucky looked away, at the discarded uniform on the floor. “It doesn’t matter.”
A long pause. Dante’s gaze was a weight on his skin. “You sure?”
“Yes. It’s not important. It’s okay.” Bucky sat up, the movement final. He began dressing, each article of clothing a layer of armor returning. The soreness between his legs felt like a taunt. He stood by the door, fully clad, a recruit again. “Have a good night, sir.”
He left without looking back. The click of the latch was the sound of a door shutting somewhere inside him.
Dante lay in the quiet. He could still smell Bucky on his sheets, on his skin. That cut-off sentence hung in the air, louder than any confession. I think I— He wanted to pry the rest of it out with his fingers. He wanted to run after him. He did nothing.
Five minutes later, a knock. Not Bucky’s hesitant tap. This was the firm, familiar rhythm of a man who owned the night. Jericho.
“What?” Dante shouted, not moving.
“Open the door, Dante.”
Dante hesitated. His eyes scanned the room: the two tin cups, the rumpled bunk, the lingering scent. He saw no direct evidence, but the evidence was in the air itself. He got up, pulled on his pants, and opened the door.
Jericho shouldered his way in, closing the door behind him. He leaned back against it, his eyes sweeping the room before landing on Dante. “Dante, man.”
He didn’t have to finish. Dante crossed his arms over his bare chest. “I know.”
“Fucking do you?” Jericho’s voice was low, intense. He wasn’t mad. It was worse. It was the grim worry of a man watching his friend walk toward a cliff. “You know how much fucking shit you could go through over this shit? Do you? They’ll cook you. They’ll bury him. They’ll make an example so ugly they’ll still be talking about it in fifty years.”
Dante looked at the photo on his desk, the woman’s smile a relic from a life where consequences were simpler. He looked back at Jericho, at the deep lines of concern on his friend’s face. “I know, Jer.”
The acknowledgment changed nothing. It just made the cliff edge feel closer, the air in the room thinner. Jericho just stared at him, waiting for a plan, for sense, for anything other than the helpless resignation he saw in his friend’s eyes.