Chapter 19: Combat Stress Relief
The farmhouse was a memory, lost in the churn of the advancing front. Now it was mud, constant rain, and the deep, skeletal forests of the Ardennes. Months had bled together, marked not by dates but by skirmishes, by the names of crossing points held and lost, by the faces of men who shipped out on stretchers or didn’t ship out at all.
Dante’s command had solidified, a hard, sharp tool. The recruits from Crossroads were no longer recruits. Reddit had a sergeant’s stripe. Cartwright had a sniper’s quiet patience. Rogers and Barnes were inseparable, a two-man engine of stubborn resilience. Jericho was Dante’s shadow and his conscience, a permanent, grumbling fixture.
And Dante himself was a drawn bowstring. The wounds from the bridge had healed to scars—a pink trough under his eye, a ropey line on his forearm, a twin set of divots above his hip that ached in the cold. But something else was fraying. The constant calculus, the weight of every decision that spelled life or death, the silent, screaming truth he’d spat at Jericho in the barn—it was etching itself deeper into his bones. He slept less. Spoke only when necessary. The icy blue of his eyes had taken on a glacial, distant sheen.
Tonight, the company was bivouacked in a waterlogged meadow. The men were packed into a leaky barn, a cacophony of snores and murmured nightmares. Dante, by rank and by choice, had a small officer’s tent pitched a hundred yards away, under the dripping branches of a dense pine copse. It wasn’t luxury. It was isolation.
Inside, the air was thick with damp wool and the sharp, clean smell of gun oil. A single lantern guttered on an upturned crate, casting jittering shadows. Dante sat on his cot, shirtless, methodically field-stripping his sidearm. The motions were automatic, thoughtless. His mind was elsewhere, trapped in the day’s earlier ambush—a messy, close-quarters thing in a fog-shrouded village. He’d lost Finney. A stupid kid, shot through the throat because he’d turned the wrong corner. Dante had seen the light go out in his eyes. Another one. Another name on a list only he kept.
The tent flap rustled.
Dante’s hand didn’t stop moving, but his head came up. Barnes stood in the opening, rain glistening on his shoulders, his face half in shadow.
“Colonel.”
“Barnes.” Dante looked back down at the pistol parts. “It’s late.”
“Couldn’t sleep.” Bucky stepped inside, letting the flap fall closed. He stood awkwardly, dripping on the groundsheet. His eyes took in Dante’s bare torso, the maps of old and new scars, the tense set of his shoulders. “Heard you didn’t eat at chow.”
“Not hungry.”
“You need to eat.” Bucky’s voice held a thread of frustration, the same one from the barn months ago. “Sir.”
Dante’s lips thinned. He slotted the barrel back into the slide with a precise click. “My nutritional intake isn’t your concern, Sergeant.”
“The hell it isn’t.” Bucky took a step forward, the concern overriding protocol. “You’re running on fumes. You look like death warmed over. You can’t lead if you’re—” He bit off the rest.
Dante set the reassembled pistol down with deliberate calm. He looked at Bucky, and the full force of his gaze was a physical pressure in the small space. “If I’m what, Barnes?”
“If you’re trying to kill yourself by inches,” Bucky shot back, his Brooklyn accent thickening with emotion. “We all saw it at the bridge. We all heard you. You don’t give a single damn about yourself. It’s like you’re just waiting for the one that sticks.”
“Careful.” The word was a low rumble, a warning.
“Or what?” Bucky challenged, his own temper flaring. “You’ll bench me? Send me back? You think I’m afraid of that? I’m more afraid of watching you walk into fire because you’ve decided your life is the most disposable one we’ve got!”
Dante stood up. He was a full head taller, his broad frame suddenly dominating the tent. The lantern light carved harsh planes into his face. “My life is a tool. It gets used where it’s most effective. That’s the job. That’s the only thing that matters. Your sentimental bullshit gets men killed. Finney today? That’s what happens when you get attached.”
“Finney died because it’s a war! Not because I gave a shit about him!” Bucky yelled, then recoiled slightly from his own words. He ran a hand through his wet hair. “That’s not… God. You twist everything. I’m saying we need you. I need you to give a fuck if you live or die. Just a little.”
Their breaths were loud in the silence, fogging in the cold air. Dante stared at him, at the youthful defiance and raw fear in Bucky’s eyes. He saw the memory of Basic there too—the stolen, frantic nights in the supply closets, the hot, silent mouth on his cock, the rule he’d laid down with absolute finality: This stays here. It can’t follow over. You understand me, Barnes?
The rule had been a wall. A necessary one.
That wall now felt like it was made of paper, soaking in the same rain that dripped through the canvas.
“Why?” Dante heard himself ask, his voice gravelly. “Why do you need that?”
“Because!” Bucky’s answer was a desperate, choked thing. He gestured wildly, helplessly. “Because someone has to! Because you saved Steve. Because you bandaged Johnson’s leg when the medic was busy. Because you remember every one of their goddamn names. You act like you’re made of stone, but you’re not. And it’s killing me to watch you pretend.”
The confession hung between them, fragile and immense. Dante took a step forward. Then another. The space vanished. He could feel the heat coming off Bucky’s rain-chilled body, see the rapid pulse in his throat.
“You said it can’t follow over,” Bucky whispered, his eyes wide, fixed on Dante’s mouth.
“I know what I fucking said, Barnes.”
Dante closed the last inch.
The kiss wasn’t gentle. It was a collision. A release of months of tension, of fear, of unspoken things. Dante’s mouth was hot and demanding, his hands coming up to frame Bucky’s face, fingers digging into his jaw, holding him still. Bucky gasped against his lips, a stunned sound that was immediately swallowed. He didn’t pull away. He surged into it, his own hands flying up to clutch at Dante’s bare shoulders, his blunt nails biting into the hard muscle.
It was a hungry, devouring thing. Teeth clacked. Tongues dueled. The taste was rainwater, cold coffee, and the pure, dark essence of want. Dante walked him backward until Bucky’s shoulders hit the central tent pole with a soft thud. The whole structure swayed.
Clothes became an enemy. Dante ripped at Bucky’s sodden field jacket, shoving it off. Bucky fumbled with Dante’s belt buckle, his fingers clumsy. Impatient, Dante swatted his hands away and undid it himself, the heavy leather sliding free with a thick hiss. He pushed Bucky’s pants and underwear down in one rough shove, past his hips. Bucky kicked free, boots and fabric tangling at his ankles.
He was naked from the waist down, shivering, his cock already hard and flushed against his stomach. Dante only spared it a glance, a dark, hungry appraisal, before he went back to kissing him, deeper, more consuming. His own pants were open, his erection straining against his shorts. He grabbed Bucky’s thigh, hiking it up high around his hip, pressing their bodies together. The feeling of skin on skin, of Bucky’s hard heat against his own, drew a raw, guttural sound from Dante’s throat.
“Quiet,” Dante breathed against his mouth, the order a hot command. “You make a sound, I stop.”
Bucky nodded frantically, his eyes glazed. The threat, the dominance of it, sent a violent shiver through him. He bit his own lip hard enough to taste copper.
Dante reached for the small tin of salve on his crate, meant for blisters. He scooped out a glob, slicking his fingers without finesse. He broke the kiss, watching Bucky’s face as his hand moved down. He pressed one thick, slippery finger against him.
Bucky’s head slammed back against the tent pole, his mouth flying open in a silent, shocked ‘O’. No sound came out. His body went taut, then yielded, a tight, hot clench around the intrusion. Dante worked him open with a ruthless, focused efficiency, first one finger, then a second, scissoring, stretching. It wasn’t gentle. It was preparatory. Necessary. Bucky panted, harsh, ragged breaths fogging the air, his hands scrabbling at Dante’s back, leaving red trails.
Dante withdrew his fingers. He slicked himself with what remained on his hand, a quick, rough stroke. He aligned his cock, the broad, flushed head nudging against the tight ring of muscle.
He looked into Bucky’s eyes, saw the fear, the anticipation, the total surrender. “Not a sound,” Dante repeated, his voice a barely-audible growl.
Then he pushed in.
It was a brutal, splitting fullness. Bucky’s eyes rolled back, a strangled, airless gasp tearing from his throat. Dante clamped a hand over his mouth, swallowing the noise. He shoved in deeper, buried himself to the hilt in one relentless drive. He stopped, both of them trembling, joined in the most visceral way possible.
For a moment, there was only the sound of the rain on canvas and their ragged breathing. Dante felt the incredible, clenching heat around him, the tight, living pressure. He hadn’t felt anything like it since Basic. Since the last time it was Barnes under him, trying to be silent. The raw, filthy reality of it was a fire in his blood.
He began to move.
It was a hard, driving rhythm. Each thrust jarred Bucky back against the pole, each retreat pulled a shiver from his core. Dante fucked him with a single-minded intensity, his hips pounding, his own pleasure a tight, coiling wire in his gut. The salve was meager, the friction fierce and unforgiving. It was perfect.
Bucky was dissolving. Pleasure, sharp and almost painful, radiated from where they were joined, burning through his veins. Dante’s hand was still over his mouth, the taste of skin and salt on his lips. His own cock, trapped and leaking between their stomachs, wept with each punishing thrust. He was helpless, utterly claimed, and it was the most alive he’d felt since landing on this godforsaken continent.
Dante’s pace increased, becoming ragged, possessive. His breaths came in hot bursts against Bucky’s ear. “This,” he grunted, punctuating the word with a deep, grinding thrust. “This is what you needed? This is what you came for?”
Bucky could only nod, a frantic, desperate motion. Tears of overwhelming sensation leaked from the corners of his eyes.
“You take it, you take all of it,” Dante growled, the words raw and shredded. His hand tightened over Bucky’s mouth. He drove into him again, a deep, punishing stroke that brushed against something that made Bucky’s spine arch violently. A muted, desperate cry was smothered against Dante’s palm.
Bucky’s hips jerked, a futile attempt to match the rhythm, to take some control. It was impossible. Dante owned the pace, the depth, the entire crushing weight of the act. Each thrust was a claiming, a physical rebuttal to every argument Bucky had dared to make minutes before. This was the truth, here in the sweat-slicked dark: not words, but this brutal, wordless joining.
The tinny salve had long since failed. The friction was hot, almost painful, a relentless drag and push that defined the boundaries of Bucky’s body. He could feel every thick inch of Dante, the pounding of his own heart in his cock, the tremble in his thighs. Pleasure was a live wire, frayed and sparking, coiling tighter with every snap of Dante’s hips.
“Look at me,” Dante ordered, his voice a harsh scrape.
Bucky forced his eyes open, blurry with unshed tears. Dante’s face was a mask of stark, unvarnished need, his jaw clenched, a vein throbbing at his temple. The icy blue was gone, swallowed by a black, hungry pupil. Seeing it, being the cause of it, undid Bucky completely.
A sharp, internal pulse began, deep in his gut. His body clamped down, a vice grip of impending release. He shook his head frantically against Dante’s hand, a warning he couldn’t voice.
Dante saw it. He read the panic in Bucky’s eyes, the tightening of his body. A savage, approving grin touched his lips. “Yeah,” he breathed. “Come on. Do it.”
The permission, gruff and filthy, was the final trigger. Bucky’s orgasm ripped through him, silent and devastating. His cock jerked between them, spilling hot streaks across both their stomachs. The intense, pulsing clench of his body around Dante’s invading length dragged a choked, guttural sound from Dante’s own throat.
Dante’s rhythm shattered into a final, frantic series of thrusts. He buried himself to the root, his whole body locking as he came. Bucky felt the hot, sudden flood inside him, a stark, intimate violation that completed the claiming. Dante’s head dropped, his forehead thudding against the tent pole beside Bucky’s head, his breath roaring in Bucky’s ear.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of their straining lungs and the distant, ever-present rumble of artillery. Dante slowly peeled his hand from Bucky’s mouth. It came away wet with saliva. Bucky sagged, held up only by Dante’s body and the pole. He felt utterly spent, hollowed out and filled all at once.
Dante withdrew, a slow, slick slide that made Bucky wince. The reality of what they’d done, the raw ache, the cooling mess, settled over them. Dante didn’t speak. He turned, found a scrap of cloth—a cleanish bandage—and wiped himself off with a few rough, practical strokes. He handed it to Bucky.
Bucky cleaned up mechanically, his movements clumsy. His legs felt like water. He couldn’t meet Dante’s eye. The post-coital silence was heavier than the forest outside.
Wordlessly, Dante guided him away from the pole and toward the narrow cot. He pushed Bucky down onto the thin mattress. Then he lay down beside him, on his back, one arm slung over his own eyes. The cot creaked perilously under their combined weight.
They lay in the dark, listening to the rain. Bucky’s mind was a whirlwind—shame, awe, a deep, unsettling satisfaction. He stared at the shadowed canvas above, at the way the lantern light bled through the seams.
“The rule,” Bucky finally whispered, the words barely audible.
“Is fucked,” Dante finished, his voice flat and tired. “Go to sleep, Barnes.”
He didn’t move to hold him. He didn’t offer comfort. But his body was a solid line of heat along Bucky’s side, his breathing gradually deepening. The tension that always gripped him seemed, for the moment, to have leaked away into the damp air.
Exhaustion, deeper than any march could cause, pulled at Bucky. The warmth of another body, the residual, pounding rhythm of his own heart, the profound physical fatigue, all conspired against thought. His eyes closed.
Outside, a sentry passed by the copse of trees, his boots squelching in the mud. He glanced at the quiet officer’s tent, saw no light, heard no sound. He moved on, unaware of the fragile, breathing secret inside.
Dante listened to the footsteps fade. He listened to Bucky’s breathing even out into sleep. The weight of the younger man beside him was an unfamiliar anchor. He left his arm over his eyes, and eventually, for the first time in weeks, slept.
He left his arm over his eyes, and eventually, for the first time in weeks, slept.
The gray, pre-dawn light filtering through the canvas was cold and unforgiving. It found the empty salve tin, the discarded scrap of cloth, the stark lines of their bodies on the narrow cot. Bucky woke first, the deep ache in his muscles a vivid catalog of the night. Dante was on his back beside him, one arm still thrown over his face, the steady rise and fall of his chest the only movement.
The sight of him sleeping, truly sleeping, felt more intimate than anything they’d done in the dark. The ruthless commander was gone. In his place was just a man, exhausted, the scars on his torso pale in the weak light. Bucky watched him for a long moment, the memory of Dante’s words in the barn—I don’t have a single fucking person waiting for me—clanging in his head alongside the new memory of his breath hot in his ear.
Dante stirred. The arm slid from his face. His icy blue eyes opened, focusing immediately, sharply, on Bucky. No confusion. Just instantaneous awareness of where he was, and who was with him. The shutters came down, but not all the way. Something raw lingered in the stillness between them.
Bucky propped himself up on an elbow. The blanket scratched his bare skin. He looked at Dante, at the fresh scar under his eye, at the permanent tired lines etched beside his mouth. The words came out soft, stripped of everything but a naked plea.
“I need you to try to give a fuck about if you live, please.”
Dante held his gaze. The morning sounds of the camp were beginning outside—muted voices, the clank of a canteen, a distant engine coughing to life. Here in the tent, the world was still small enough to hold. He saw the look in Bucky’s eyes, the same desperate determination from last night, now mixed with a fear that had nothing to do with combat.
He let out a long, slow breath, fogging in the chill air. It sounded like surrender.
“I’ll try,” Dante said, the words quiet, gravelly with sleep, but unequivocal. A promise dug from a deep, guarded place. Then the practical world rushed back in. His eyes flicked toward the tent flap. “Go get back before they realize you’re gone.”
Bucky nodded. He moved, wincing slightly as he swung his legs off the cot. The cold air hit his skin, raising goosebumps. He dressed quickly, silently, pulling on his uniform with stiff, efficient motions. Dante watched him, still lying on the cot, making no move to cover himself. The observation felt heavier than touch.
Finished, Bucky stood there for a second, unsure of how to leave. A handshake was absurd. Last night ruled out a salute. Dante solved it by closing his eyes again, turning his face away toward the canvas wall. A clear dismissal. The moment was over.
Bucky slipped out of the tent. The camp was a world of washed-out greens and browns, mist clinging to the pines. He moved quickly, weaving between other tents, his body humming with the echo of Dante’s promise and the persistent, thrilling ache. He ducked into the barn just as Rogers was sitting up on his bedroll, rubbing his face.
“Hey, where’d you get to?” Steve asked, his voice thick.
“Latrine,” Bucky muttered, crawling onto his own pallet. “Couldn’t sleep.”
Back in the officer’s tent, Dante listened to the fading footsteps. He opened his eyes. The space beside him was empty, but the impression of a body remained in the thin mattress. He sat up, the blanket pooling at his waist. The cold bit deeper now. He reached for his cigarettes, lit one, the first drag scraping his lungs.
I’ll try.
He turned the words over in his mind. They felt foreign, like a piece of ill-fitting gear. Giving a fuck was a complication. It was a secondary explosion waiting to happen, scattering your focus into messy, painful fragments. He thought of Finney’ blank eyes, of the list in his head, of the simple, clean arithmetic of sacrifice he’d lived by for years.
The cigarette burned down toward his fingers. Outside, Jericho’s voice cut through the mist, barking orders for the morning detail. The war was waiting, impatient and insatiable. Dante crushed the butt on the crate beside his cot. He stood, the muscles in his back and shoulders pulling tight. He dressed with his usual robotic precision, each layer—undershirt, wool shirt, tunic—settling over the scars, over the night, over the promise.
As he buckled his belt, his fingers brushed the familiar scar above his hip. He paused. Then he finished dressing, grabbed his sidearm, and pushed out through the tent flap into the cold, waking day. The weight of it—the command, the men, the promise—settled onto his shoulders. It felt different. Not lighter. Just different. He walked toward the growing noise of the camp, his face once again a mask of impassive command, but somewhere behind his ribs, a new and fragile thing had taken root, beating in time with his heart.