Chapter 26: Uninvited
The sun through the blinds was an accusation. It sliced across Dante’s face, a sharp, dusty bar of light that found him curled on his side on the floor, still in yesterday’s clothes. His head was a roiling chamber of pulsing pain, his mouth tasted of ash and regret. The empty bottle lay on its side near his thigh. The gun was on the coffee table, black and patient.
He didn’t move. He just breathed, each inhale a labor. The memories didn’t come in a wave; they were the floor he was lying on, solid and inescapable.
He’d fucked Jericho’s wife. In their bed. Jericho’s fucking bed. The one with the navy blue comforter Jericho had bitched was too expensive. He could still see the pattern of the wallpaper in their hallway as he’d pushed her against it, her gasp loud in the silent house that smelled of Jericho’s cigars and her lavender perfume. He’d done it in their shower, the water scalding, and in their kitchen, her perched on the counter where Jericho made his famous, terrible pancakes. Then he’d brought her back here, to his own sheets, as if defiling his own space could somehow dilute the sin.
Jericho was dead. Tripp was dead. Michael was dead, friendly fire, a chaotic scream over the comms that never stopped echoing. His mom was dead. All his friends were just ghosts in uniform, frozen in photos, their laughter a taunt.
And Bucky. That kid with the earnest eyes and the lying mouth. The one spark of something that wasn’t destruction, and it had been built on a lie. It felt pathetic, now, to have that betrayal carved into the same monument as the others, but it was. It fit. Everything rotted. Everyone left.
A sound escaped him, a raw, grinding sob that started in his gut and tore his throat. He rolled onto his back, arm flung over his eyes, but it didn’t stop. The crying was ugly, uncontrollable, his chest heaving, his face wet. He cried for hours, until his ribs ached and his eyes were swollen slits, until he was just a hollow, shuddering vessel on the dirty floor.
He woke later, the light shifted. The depression hadn’t lifted; it had solidified. It was a lead cape, a lungful of concrete. He pushed himself up, the room tilting, and found another bottle. Drank it like water, the burn doing nothing, accomplishing only a deeper, more numb dullness.
The mental breakdown was quiet. There was no screaming. Just a sudden, absolute certainty that he could not exist inside this skin for one more second. The weight of it was physical, crushing his sternum, making his breath shallow pants.
He sat down hard, his back against the leg of his armchair. He picked up the gun from the table. A standard-issue M9, cool and familiar in his hand. The weight was a comfort. The solution was absurdly simple.
He could do it.
The barrel was a black circle. He placed it against his temple. The metal was cold. He could feel his pulse hammering against it. His finger rested on the trigger, the curve fitting like it was made for him.
He could pull the trigger.
It would be so easy. A fractional increase of pressure. An end to the guilt that was eating him alive, cell by cell. An end to the images: Jericho’s smile, the wife’s mouth, Bucky’s turned back, his mother’s handwriting. Silence. Finally.
He could.
He sat there for a long time, the gun a fixed point in the universe. He saw his own finger whiten. He measured the breath he would hold.
But he wouldn’t.
The realization wasn’t heroic. It was a biological fact, as undeniable as a heartbeat. His body, the animal part of him, refused. The command from his brain dissolved before it reached his hand.
A great, shuddering exhale left him. His arm dropped as if the bones had vanished. The gun clattered onto the floorboards, loud in the stagnant air.
He stared at it, a dark tumor on the wood. Then the tears came again, silent this time, pouring down his face as he drew his knees up and buried his head in his arms, his big frame folding in on itself, reduced to pure, unmanageable grief.
Then the tears came again, silent this time, pouring down his face as he drew his knees up and buried his head in his arms, his big frame folding in on itself, reduced to pure, unmanageable grief. He stayed that way as the light moved across the floor, the jagged stripes from the blind slats climbing the far wall and fading into a dull, uniform gray. Eventually, the tears stopped, but the ache behind his breastbone only hardened, a geological weight.
Time became a substance he was suspended in, thick and without current. He didn’t move from the spot beside the chair. His thoughts were not thoughts but a single, resonant frequency: alone. Jericho’s voice from basic training, a raspy shout across the muddy yard, meant nothing now. Tripp’s stupid jokes in the smoky bunker meant nothing. The war itself, all that noise and fury and dirt, it had meant saving something, but everything worth saving was already ash.
The apartment smelled of his own sour sweat and the ghost of last week’s whiskey. He could see the M9 from here, its silhouette a dark promise on the worn floorboards. He didn’t reach for it. The failure to do so felt like his greatest cowardice. “Should’ve done it,” he mumbled into the fabric of his shirt, the words garbled and wet. “Just should’ve fucking done it.”
A memory surfaced, unbidden and cruel: Bucky that first time in basic, his back arching, the morning light catching the sweat on his spine. The kid had looked over his shoulder, grinning, breathless. “You like that?” he’d asked, all easy confidence. And Dante had, God help him, he really had. He let out a sharp, punched-out sound. That was nothing, too. Just a lie dressed up in heat and motion.
His chest constricted, a visceral cramp of loss so acute he pressed the heel of his hand hard against his sternum. It wasn’t just Bucky. It was the architecture of his entire life collapsing inward. Every handshake, every shared look, every silent understanding in a foxhole—it all turned to dust the moment the person was gone. The connections were phantom limbs, itching with a presence that no longer existed.
The buzzer from the downstairs door echoed through the empty space, a harsh, ratcheting noise. He didn’t flinch. It buzzed again, longer this time, an insistent drone. Someone was leaning on it. Let them. It stopped. Silence rushed back in, heavier than before.
He focused on the cracked glass of his brother’s photo frame. The smile behind the fracture line was a mockery from a simpler world. He remembered teaching Michael to throw a spiral in their backyard, the grass staining their knees green. The memory was perfect and sterile, a museum diorama behind glass. It offered no warmth, only proof of what was gone.
His stomach growled, a hollow, animal reminder. He ignored it. Thirst clawed at his throat. He didn’t move. The physical demands were distant radio signals, easily ignored. The core of him was a vacuum, and it was pulling everything into its numbness.
Hours passed, or maybe minutes. The gray at the window deepened into a proper dusk. He finally uncurled, his muscles screaming in protest, joints popping. He stood slowly, the room tilting, and walked to the kitchen on unsteady legs. He didn’t turn on the light. He ran the tap, cupped tepid water in his hands, and drank. It tasted of metal and the city.
He leaned on the sink, looking out at the fire escape and the brick wall beyond. A single, defiant weed grew from a mortar crack three stories up. He watched until the last light made it disappear into shadow. His heart ached tremendously, a deep, weeping bruise that no amount of stillness could heal. He was a column of pain in a darkening room, and when he finally shuffled back toward the bedroom, he stepped over the gun on the floor without a downward glance.
He collapsed onto the mattress face-first, the whiskey-damp wool of the blanket scratching his cheek. The world didn’t fade so much as snap off, like a switched bulb, plunging him into a thick, dreamless oblivion. He passed out finally.
He passed out finally.
The knock wasn’t part of the dream. It was a real, solid sound, pounding against the front door of his apartment. Dante surfaced from the blackness like a diver with the bends, his head throbbing in time with the relentless thudding.
He pushed himself up from the mattress, the world tilting on its axis. He didn’t bother putting a shirt on. The hardwood floor was cold under his bare feet as he stalked through the gloom of the living room, stepping over the forgotten gun without a glance. He yanked the door open.
It was Bucky.
He stood there in a simple grey henley and jeans, his face a careful blank, but his eyes were doing too much work, taking in Dante’s bare chest, the sweat-damp hair, the probable wildness in his own gaze. The hall light behind him was too bright.
“What the fuck do you want, Barnes?” Dante said. His voice was sandpaper, stripped of any emotion at all.
Bucky’s jaw worked, his eyes tracing the new hollows under Dante’s cheekbones. “I wanted to see you.”
Dante looked at him, the icy blue of his eyes dulled to a flat, wintry gray. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“You look like shit,” Bucky said, his voice softening around the edges despite the words. “You shouldn’t be alone.”
“You won’t be the one keeping me company.” Dante’s voice cracked, but the anger forged it solid again. “What I’m doing shouldn’t fucking concern you, Barnes.”
Bucky took a half-step forward, his own frustration breaking through the careful calm. “Why do you keep pushing everybody out? Why can you not let someone stay for once?”
“You fucking lied to me.” Dante’s hand slapped against the doorjamb, the sound sharp in the hall. “You fucking kept hooking up with me throughout basic when I was training you. And then in the fucking war. You didn’t say you were in a fucking relationship. You fucked that shit up. Not me. I’m not pushin’ you away, you did that shit.”
“It wasn’t like that!” Bucky shot back, his hands rising. “It was over, it was dying before I even met you, I was just–”
“Just what?” Dante’s laugh was a short, vicious bark. “Convenient? A dumb fuck distraction? You think that makes it better?”
“I was scared! Of this, of you, of what it meant!” Bucky’s voice rose, matching Dante’s decibel for decibel. “You think it was easy for me? You were my commanding officer, for Christ’s sake. You were… you are Dante Marcus.”
The name hung between them, loaded with all its unspoken weight—the legend, the rank, the terrifying, magnetic man. Dante turned away from the door, running a hand through his matted hair. He gestured vaguely at the apartment’s interior, a sweeping indictment of the empty bottles and the silent gun on the floor.
“Look at this,” he said, the fury bleeding into a raw, shaky exhaustion. “This is what’s left. Jericho’s gone. I fucked his wife in his bed. I can smell her perfume on my hands and I can’t get it off.” He held his trembling fingers up, staring at them. “Tripp’s gone. Michael. Everyone. And you. You were the one thing I had that wasn’t ash. And it was built on a lie.”
“It wasn’t a lie,” Bucky insisted, stepping fully inside now and closing the door behind him. The click was final. “What I felt wasn’t a lie. What I feel now isn’t.”
“Don’t,” Dante warned, his back still turned.
“I’m not leaving you like this.”
“Get out.”
“No.”
Dante spun, the movement sudden and violent. A muscle ticked in his jaw. “You don’t get to decide that. You don’t get to swan back in here after your conscience starts prickling and play the goddamn hero. I had the barrel in my mouth, Bucky. Right there. On the floor.”
The air left the room. Bucky’s eyes flicked past him, locating the dark shape on the boards. His face paled. “Dante.”
“I couldn’t even do that right,” Dante whispered, and the dam broke. A ragged, wounded sound tore from his throat. The tears came hot and fast, streaking through the grime on his face. “I couldn’t do it. I’m stuck here. I’m stuck in this fucking room with all of them and I can’t… I can’t breathe.”
He wasn’t just crying now; he was unraveling, the sobs wracking his broad frame, his fists clenched at his sides as if he was physically holding himself together. He yelled, a wordless roar of anguish directed at the ceiling, at the walls, at the unfeeling world.
Bucky didn’t flinch. He didn’t get scared. He just watched for a long moment, his own eyes bright. Then he crossed the space in three quick strides.
He didn’t try to hug him. He just put his hands on Dante’s bare shoulders, his grip firm and grounding. “Hey,” he said, his voice low and steady. “Look at me. C’mon, look at me.”
Dante tried to shake him off, but the motion had no force. He let his forehead fall against Bucky’s shoulder, his body still shuddering. The heat of another person, after so long in the cold, was a shock.
“I’m here,” Bucky said, one hand moving to the back of Dante’s neck, holding him there. “I’m not going anywhere. Just breathe. Breathe, Dante.”
Breathe, Dante."
But he couldn't. The command was logical, impossible. His lungs were sacks of concrete, his throat a narrowed vise. The world smeared at the edges, the familiar shapes of his apartment—the sagging armchair, the cracked photo frame—dissolving into swirling, menacing shadows. A high, thin whine filled his ears, and the pressure in his chest exploded into pure, electric terror.
His knees buckled. Bucky’s grip on his shoulders was the only anchor.
“Okay,” Bucky said, his voice cutting through the static. “Okay, I got you.” He didn’t ask questions. He’d seen the thousand-yard stare back in the desert, the cold sweats in the bunker after a bad patrol. He’d heard the muffled shouts from Dante’s sleep. One thing Bucky knew: Dante’s life had always been hell. He’d just had a traumatic ass life. And Dante had horrible depression and PTSD, and Bucky couldn’t even imagine what it was like now that he was fully alone.
This was different. This was freefall.
Dante’s breath hitched, a frantic, shallow panting that wasn’t bringing in any air. His eyes were wide, unseeing, fixed on some internal horror show. Bucky moved fast, steering the larger man away from the center of the room, away from the dark shape of the gun on the floorboards. He guided him to the edge of the messy bed.
“Sit down. Right here.” Bucky’s voice was calm, a flat plane in the chaos. He pushed Dante down until his ass hit the mattress, then sat beside him. He maneuvered Dante’s rigid back against his chest, wrapping his arms around him, pinning Dante’s trembling forearms down against his own stomach. He felt the frantic jackhammer of Dante’s heart through both their shirts.
“You’re having a panic attack,” Bucky said into his ear, his breath steady. “It’s just a panic attack. It can’t kill you. Feel my chest? Match it.”
Dante gagged, trying to draw breath. His head thrashed back against Bucky’s shoulder.
Bucky held him tighter, a firm, unyielding cage. “Stop fighting it. In….” He took an exaggerated, deep inhale, making his own chest expand against Dante’s spine. “Out…” He let the air sigh out slowly, his body deflating. “Again. In… Out…”
It took forever. Dante’s muscles were steel cables, vibrating with trapped adrenaline. Bucky just kept breathing, a mechanical, metronomic rhythm against him. He didn’t speak beyond the simple commands. Out. He counted the breaths in his head, a silent tally marking the crawl out of the pit.
Gradually, the convulsive gasps began to sync, stuttering at first, then lengthening. The terrifying silence between inhales shrank. The blinding white terror receded, leaving behind a vast, hollow exhaustion and a fresh, choking shame.
The tight coil of Dante’s body went slack, melting back into Bucky’s hold. A deep, shuddering sob erupted from him, then another, breaking apart the last of the tension. He cried hard, his whole body weeping, tears streaming down his face and onto Bucky’s forearms. This was breaking Bucky’s heart. He’d seen Dante at lows. But never like this. Never this total dissolution.
“It’s alright,” Bucky murmured, his cheek against Dante’s damp temple. He didn’t offer empty platitudes. He just held on. One hand rubbed firm, slow circles on Dante’s back, right between his shoulder blades, a tangible point of focus. “Just let it go. I’ve got you.”
The storm of tears subsided into hiccupping shudders, then into a deep, weary quiet. Dante’s breathing evened out, becoming slow and heavy. The weight against Bucky’s chest became complete, a dead weight of utter depletion. Bucky kept rubbing his back, listening, until the rhythm turned deep and regular, the hitches gone.
Dante Marcus, the formidable Colonel, a man built of grim will and dark ink, had fallen asleep on him, his head lolling back against Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky didn’t move. He adjusted his stance minutely to bear the weight, staring at the opposite wall, listening to the soft, living sound of Dante’s breath.
He adjusted his stance minutely to bear the weight, staring at the opposite wall, listening to the soft, living sound of Dante’s breath. The room held its own kind of silence now, thick and watchful, broken only by that rhythmic pull of air. Bucky’s arms ached, but he didn’t dare shift; the peace was too fragile, a soap bubble balanced on his fingertips.
Outside, a siren wailed blocks away, a distant animal sound. The jagged stripes from the blind slats had crawled up the wall and vanished, the room steeped in deep evening blue. He could see the dark rose on Dante’s knuckles, limp against his own forearm. This wasn’t the man who’d pinned him to those twisted sheets, all command and hungry pressure. This was something undone.
Dante stirred with a sharp inhale, a body remembering itself. His muscles tensed, then froze, recognizing the confine of arms around him. Bucky felt the realization click into place, the stiffening of the spine, the immediate flood of shame. He loosened his hold, letting Dante pull forward if he wanted.
Dante didn’t move away. He just sat there, bent forward, elbows on his knees, his back to Bucky. His shoulders rose and fell once, heavily. “How long,” he asked, his voice stripped bare.
“Maybe twenty minutes.” Bucky’s own voice was rough from disuse.
Dante nodded at the floor. He rubbed a hand over his face, a slow, grinding motion. “You saw it.”
“I saw the gun. Yeah.”
“I couldn’t do it.”
“I know.”
Dante’s head dropped lower. “I wanted to.”
“I know that, too.” Bucky’s words weren’t gentle; they were just facts, laid out between them like stones. He watched the broad expanse of Dante’s back, the tattooed sleeve a blur in the low light. The silence stretched, but it was different now. It was waiting.
“The wife,” Dante said, the word ugly in his mouth. “Jericho’s. It wasn’t… it wasn’t even about her.”
“What was it about?”
“Punishment.” Dante said it like he was reading a diagnosis from a chart. “Feeling something that matched. Something rotten. I wanted to ruin something he loved because he was gone and I wasn’t.” He let out a short, shattered sound. “It just made me feel emptier. Now I just smell her soap everywhere.”
Bucky didn’t reply. He looked past Dante, at the bottle on the floor, the cracked photo. He understood ruin. He’d been complicit in his own kind.
“You shouldn’t have come back here,” Dante said, but the heat was gone. It was just a statement, weary and resigned.
“Where else was I gonna go?”
“Anywhere. Somewhere that isn’t this.” Dante gestured weakly at the room, at himself.
“Yeah, well.” Bucky pushed himself off the bed, his joints protesting. He walked over to the gun, his shadow falling over it. He bent down, picked it up. It was heavier than he expected. He ejected the magazine, cleared the chamber with a smooth, practiced click that echoed. The single round spun on the floorboards, a tiny brass circle. He placed the disassembled pieces on the high bookshelf, behind a dusty stack of field manuals. “There,” he said, dusting his hands on his jeans. “Now it’s a paperweight.”
Dante watched him, his icy blue eyes tracking the movement. He said nothing.
Bucky went to the kitchen, navigating by the streetlight glow from the window. He filled a glass with water, came back, and held it out. Dante looked at it, then up at him. He took the glass, his fingers brushing Bucky’s. He drank it all in three long gulps, his throat working.
“You need food,” Bucky said.
“Not hungry.”
“You’re going to eat.” Bucky turned back to the kitchen, opening cabinets. He found a can of soup, the kind with the pull-top lid. The metallic rip was loud. He heated it in a small pot, the simple act feeling monumental in the stagnant apartment. The smell of salty broth began to displace the ghosts of whiskey and grief.
He brought the pot and a single spoon over, setting it on the nightstand. Dante hadn’t moved. Bucky sat beside him again, not touching. “Eat it.”
Dante picked up the spoon. His hand trembled slightly. He took a mouthful, then another. He ate mechanically, his gaze fixed on some middle distance beyond the wall. Bucky watched the side of his face, the tight line of his jaw, the exhaustion etched into the skin around his eyes.
When the pot was half empty, Dante put the spoon down. “It was over with her. The girl back home. Before basic, even. I just… didn’t know how to say it. To you. To myself. Felt like admitting one thing would make all the other things real.”
Bucky absorbed this. He thought of the letters he’d pretended to write, the careful omission that had felt like a necessary lie. “I know.”
“You don’t get to say ‘I know’,” Dante muttered, but it lacked force. It was a reflex.
“Okay.” Bucky leaned back, stretching his legs out. “Then I don’t know. I just know you’re here. And I’m here. And the gun’s a paperweight.”
Dante finally turned his head to look at him. The intensity in his eyes was still there, but it was diffused, blurred by pain. “Why? After everything. After what I just was.”
Bucky met his gaze and held it. “You think what you just were changes anything? You think I didn’t know the weight you carry? I’ve always known, Dante. I just finally saw how deep the hole was.” He shook his head, a quick, frustrated motion. “I’m not here to fix you. I’m just not leaving you in the hole.”
Dante looked away, back at his hands. A long minute passed, filled with the distant hum of the city. “I can’t promise anything,” he said, so quiet it was almost lost. “Not to you. Not to myself.”
“I’m not asking for promises.”
“What are you asking for?”
Bucky considered. “A tomorrow. However shitty it is. That you’re here for it.”
Dante let out a slow breath. He nodded, once. It wasn’t agreement to a future. It was an acknowledgment of the present, of the man sitting next to him, of the soup cooling on the nightstand. It was the barest possible grip on the edge of the hole.
Bucky stood. “You should sleep. Actual sleep.” He pulled back the twisted sheets, the fabric still holding the impression of Dante’s form from a previous lifetime. He didn’t fluff them or make a show of it. He just straightened them roughly.
Dante stared at the bed, then at Bucky. A silent question hung in the air.
“I’ll be on the couch,” Bucky said, answering it. “If you need something. Or if you just… need to know I’m there.”
He started to turn away. Dante’s hand shot out, not grabbing, just fingers brushing his wrist, stopping him. The contact was electric, a spark in the gloom. Dante didn’t look up. “Don’t,” he said, the word strained. “The couch is broken. Springs are all fucked.”
Bucky waited. Dante’s fingers trembled against his skin.
“Just… stay on the other side.” Dante released his wrist, the dismissal itself a kind of plea. He kicked off his boots, lay down on his side facing the wall, his body occupying exactly half the mattress. He left a canyon of empty space behind him.
Bucky took off his own shoes. He lay down on top of the covers, on his back, staring at the ceiling. The mattress dipped between them, a geographical border. He could feel the heat radiating from Dante’s body, a solid presence in the dark. He could hear every shift of fabric, every uneven breath.
Neither of them slept. They lay in the quiet, two wrecked vessels moored in the same uneasy harbor. The gun was a paperweight. The bottle was empty. The ghost of lavender soap still lingered, but beneath it was the scent of soup, of sweat, of two people breathing in the same damaged air.
After an hour, or perhaps two, Dante’s voice came, a low rumble in the darkness. “Buck?”
“Yeah.”
A pause. “Nothing. Just checking.”
Bucky closed his eyes. “I’m here.”