Chapter 9: The Colonel's Return
The dawn was a cold, grey smear against the horizon. Mist clung to the training field, turning the obstacle course into a series of vague, threatening shapes. Bucky stood with his squad, shoulders hunched against the damp chill, his breath pluming in the air. He hadn’t slept. His mind had been a reel of scars and facedown photographs and the flat, grief-stricken tone of a confession.
The crunch of boots on gravel was the only warning.
Dante Marcus emerged from the mist like it had conjured him. He was back in full uniform, crisp and imposing, every inch the Colonel. His hair was slicked back perfectly, his jaw set. The vulnerability from the barracks was gone, sealed away beneath khaki and authority. Only the shadows under his eyes, darker than yesterday, hinted at the night he must have had.
He didn’t look at Bucky. He didn’t look at anyone in particular. He walked to the front of the formation and stopped, his hands clasped behind his back, surveying them with that unnerving icy stare.
The silence stretched, filled only by the distant caw of a crow and the uneasy shifting of boots in the mud.
“Listen up,” Dante’s voice cut through the fog, no louder than necessary, but it carried like a whip-crack. “We’re going to run the infiltration course. Timed. Full kit.”
A collective, inward groan passed through the recruits. The infiltration course was a special kind of hell—mud, barbed wire, climbing nets, all under simulated fire.
Dante began to pace slowly along the line. His eyes tracked over them, missing nothing. “You will keep your heads down. You will watch your corners. You will communicate. You will not,” he said, pausing, his gaze sweeping across them, “do the monumentally dumb shit that gets your brothers killed.”
He stopped, directly in the center. His voice dropped, losing its projection, gaining a gritty, personal intensity. “I’m not giving you hypotheticals. I’m giving you the aftermath of stupid. It smells like blood and burned earth. It fits in a lockbox the size of your hand. It’s the look on a mother’s face when they hand her a folded flag.” He held up his left hand, the dark rose on his knuckles stark against his skin. “It’s the reason you get a tattoo you can’t look at without wanting to vomit.”
Bucky felt his throat tighten. He stared straight ahead, at the muddy field, but he could feel the words carving a space inside his chest.
Dante lowered his hand. “So you follow procedure. You trust the man next to you, but you verify your own damn intel. You question a bad order, even if it comes from me. Because the goal is to come home. Not in a box, not with pieces of you missing, not with ghosts in your goddamn barracks.” He finally, slowly, let his gaze travel across every face. It lingered on Bucky for a fraction of a second, a blank, impersonal glance that felt like a door slamming shut.
Then a grim, almost imperceptible smirk touched his lips. It wasn’t friendly. “And if any of you feel the urge or get the balls to punch me in my shit one day, good fuckin’ luck.”
He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to. The statement hung there—a challenge, a dismissal, a bizarre piece of permission. It was the most personal thing he’d said to the whole group, and it was wrapped in barbed wire.
“First squad, you’re up,” Dante barked, his voice snapping back to its full, commanding volume. “Move out. The clock starts now.”
And just like that, it was over. The moment of raw, uncomfortable truth evaporated. The machine of training engaged. Sergeants yelled, recruits scrambled toward the starting line, the mist began to churn with their movement.
Bucky fell into step with his squad, his mind reeling. Punch me in my shit. The crude, violent phrasing was a deflection, a way to take the ache of last night and box it up as something you could fight. Dante had shown him the open wound and was now telling him, and everyone else, to treat it like a training dummy.
The course was a blur of cold, sucking mud and burning lungs. Bucky crawled under barbed wire, the screech of it catching on his webbing inches from his face. He hauled himself over a wall, muscles screaming. He low-crawled through a ditch of icy, putrid water. All the while, he could feel Dante’s presence. The Colonel wasn’t yelling; he was observing. A silent, stationary figure at the edge of the field, watching them flounder through the misery he’d designed.
During a breather before the final crawl, Bucky wiped mud from his eyes. He glanced over. Dante was talking to Sergeant Jericho, his posture relaxed but his expression focused. Jericho said something, nodding toward the recruits. Dante just shook his head once, a sharp, final motion. Don’t ask. Bucky looked away, a strange jealousy curdling in his gut. Jericho had earned the right to ask. Bucky had just earned a warning.
“Barnes! Move your ass or I’ll leave you in that ditch!” a sergeant roared.
Bucky pushed forward, the final stretch a tunnel of mud and adrenaline. He emerged at the end, gasping, coated in filth, his time unremarkable. He stumbled to the water station, grabbing a canteen.
He felt the shift in the air before he saw it. The attention of the exhausted recruits nearby subtly tightened, focusing on a point behind him.
Bucky turned.
Dante was walking through the groups of panting, muddy men. He wasn’t heading for Bucky. He was heading for Cartwright, a recruit from Ohio who was sitting on a log, head in his hands, quietly crying from frustration and fatigue.
Dante crouched in front of him, his back to most of the others. Bucky was close enough to hear.
“You’re done?” Dante asked, his voice low, not mocking.
Cartwright nodded, ashamed, unable to speak.
“Get up.”
“Sir, I can’t—”
“Get. Up.” The command was absolute.
Cartwright, trembling, pushed himself to his feet. Dante stood, looking down at him. Then, to everyone’s shock, Dante reached out and straightened the kid’s muddy, crooked helmet. It was a small, precise gesture. Almost paternal.
“The ditch is the worst part,” Dante said, his voice still quiet, for Cartwright alone. “The water gets in your boots, your head gets fuzzy. It feels like you’re drowning in broad daylight.” He tapped Cartwright’s chest with two fingers. “But you got through it. Remember the part you finished. Not the part that broke you.”
He didn’t wait for a response. He turned and walked away, leaving Cartwright standing straighter, wiping his face with a muddy sleeve.
Bucky watched him go, the canteen forgotten in his hand. He saw the contradiction in real time: the brutal warning, the crude challenge, followed by this quiet, devastating act of mercy. It was the same man who’d shown him his scars and then told him to get lost. The same man who carried a lockbox and led a training exercise.
Dante reached the edge of the field again, conferring with a sergeant about times. As if he sensed the weight of Bucky’s stare, he glanced over his shoulder.
Their eyes met across thirty yards of churned earth and exhausted men.
No nod. No acknowledgment. Just a look that was neither an invitation nor a rejection. It was a simple, stark reality. This is what it is. This is all it can be.
Then Dante turned back to the sergeant, pointing at a clipboard. The moment dissolved into the mundane mechanics of the day.
The training continued. Push-ups. Weapon drills. Dante’s voice was everywhere, demanding, correcting, a constant, abrasive presence. The raw confession of the night before might as well have been a dream. For everyone else, it was.
But for Bucky, standing in the cold dawn, the taste of mud and gun oil in his mouth, the two versions of Dante Marcus coexisted in his head, refusing to reconcile. The wounded man in the barracks and the commander in the field were the same person. And the confusing, magnetic pull Bucky felt was for both of them. It was the most dangerous realization he’d ever had.
It was the most dangerous realization he’d ever had. The following morning’s drills felt different, the air less charged with punitive tension. Dante ran them through maneuvers with a detached efficiency, his corrections clear but devoid of the usual searing contempt. “Your footwork’s sloppy, Reddit. Watch the pivot.” He said it like noting the weather, then moved on. Bucky watched, his mind a mess of the prior night’s ghosts, and came to a bleak, settling conclusion. The man was a vault, sealed with grief and rank. Whatever confusing heat Bucky felt was a one-way current. Dante Marcus was straight. It was the only architecture that made sense.
They broke for lunch under a pale, insipid sun. Bucky sat on a rough wooden bench with Steve, Cartwright, and Reddit, picking at the gluey mashed potatoes on his tray. His friends bickered about a baseball game, the sound a muffled buzz in his ears. His attention was pulled across the yard like iron to a magnet. Dante was leaning against the side of the ordinance shed, talking to a captain Bucky recognized as Tripp from logistics. It wasn’t the conversation that snagged him. It was the posture.
Captain Tripp was grinning, saying something that made his whole body lean in. Dante had one boot propped against the shed wall, his arms crossed, but his head was tilted, listening. And he was smiling. Not a smirk. A real, unguarded smile that softened the harsh lines of his face, that made his icy eyes crinkle at the corners. Bucky stared, his fork hovering. He’d never seen Dante look like that—not aggravated, not calculating, just… engaged. Amused, even.
A cold knot tightened in Bucky’s stomach. He tore his gaze away, shoving a lump of potato into his mouth. Thankfully, Steve was mid-rant about the Dodgers, and no one noticed his distraction. When he risked another glance, Dante was pushing off the wall. He said something low to Jericho, who stood nearby smoking. Jericho’s eyebrows lifted, then he gave a slow, knowing nod. The silent exchange was intimate, a language of years. Dante turned and walked away, not toward the main buildings, but along the path that led to the isolated cluster of senior officers’ quarters.
Bucky’s heart began a slow, heavy thump. About five minutes later, still chatting with another lieutenant, Captain Tripp casually excused himself. He stretched, glanced at his watch, and ambled off in the exact same direction Dante had gone.
The lunchtime chatter around Bucky swelled. He couldn’t hear it. Two minutes later, Jericho stubbed out his cigarette. “Okay, listen up!” he barked. The group quieted. “Colonel Marcus put me in charge. I don’t want to run shit today, so you guys are free for the rest of the day. Don’t burn the place down.”
A cheer went up. Benches scraped as men scattered toward the barracks, the rec hall, anywhere but the training field. “Hey, Buck, you coming?” Steve asked, already standing. “Might actually get my letters written.”
“Yeah,” Bucky heard himself say. “You go ahead. I, uh, left my canteen back at the obstacle course. I’ll catch up.”
Steve shrugged, already turning with the others. “Don’t be long.”
Bucky walked slowly toward the course, his pulse now a drum in his throat. He made a show of scanning the mud. Then he cut sharp left, into the shadow of a supply depot, his boots quiet on the gravel. He moved with a thief’s caution, following the tree-lined path toward the officers’ barrack. The building was quieter, set apart. He saw no one.
His breath hitched. Dante was just disappearing inside, the door not quite latching behind him. Bucky froze behind a thick oak, the bark rough against his palm. He shouldn’t. This was a line, stark and bright. He crossed it.
He approached the building from the side, his movements soundless. The door had swung to, but the old frame was warped. A slim, vertical crack of shadow showed it wasn’t fully closed. Light spilled out from within. Bucky’s mouth went dry as dust. He pressed his back to the clapboard siding, then edged his head toward the light.
The room was a mirror of Dante’s own spare quarters: a cot, a desk, a footlocker. Captain Tripp was leaning against the desk, his cap off, running a hand through his sandy hair. He was still smiling. Dante was out of Bucky’s immediate line of sight, but his voice rolled out, low and familiar, wrapping around the space.
“It’s always good to see you, Marcus,” Tripp said, the smile evident in his tone.
“Whys that, Cap?” Dante’s voice came from deeper in the room. Relaxed. A tone Bucky had never heard.
Tripp gave a soft snort. “Real fuckin’ mystery.” His eyes tracked someone moving. “You want to keep talking, or do you want me to remind you why it’s good to see me?” He heard Dante say.
Boots scuffed on the floorboards. Dante moved into view. He walked right up to Tripp, stopping so close their boots almost touched. He stood directly in front of him, a wall of muscle and intensity, his head tilted down. Barely inches away. Bucky’s heart was a frantic animal trying to escape his ribs.
“Remind me,” Tripp said, his voice dropping to a husky register.
Dante’s left hand came up, the one with the dark rose. He didn’t hesitate. He fisted it in the back of Tripp’s hair, not gently, and pulled. He leaned down and their mouths crashed together.
It wasn’t a kiss. It was a collision. A raw, hungry claim. Dante’s other hand grabbed Tripp’s jaw, holding him still as he plundered his mouth. Bucky heard the wet, sucking sound, the sharp intake of breath. Tripp moaned into it, his hands flying up to clutch at Dante’s shirt, pulling him closer.
“Fuck, missed that,” Dante growled, tearing his mouth away to bite down the line of Tripp’s throat.
“Yeah? Show me,” Tripp panted, already fumbling with Dante’s belt.
Tripp’s fingers were clumsy on the brass buckle, driven by a frantic hunger. Dante knocked his hands away with a low grunt. “Impatient fuck.” He unbuckled it himself, the leather hissing through the loops, but he didn’t open the trousers. Instead, his big hands, marked with that dark rose, went to the buttons of Tripp’s shirt. He popped them one by one, methodical even now, his knuckles brushing the warm skin of Tripp’s chest.
He pushed the fabric off Tripp’s shoulders, letting it fall to the floor. Tripp was already working Dante’s shirt, yanking it from his trousers, hands sliding up the scarred terrain of his abdomen and chest. Their mouths found each other again in a messy, breathless clash of teeth and tongue. The kissing was constant, a wet, open-mouthed dialogue that muffled their ragged breathing.
Dante’s shirt joined Tripp’s on the boards. The two of them stood chest to chest in the barrack’s dim light, all scarred muscle and taut skin. Dante pulled back just enough to look down at Tripp, his blue eyes burning. “How much did you miss it?” he asked, his voice scraping low and hot from his throat.
Bucky’s heart gave a sick, thrilling lurch against his ribs. The tone was intimate, possessive, a sound he’d never imagined from that mouth.
Tripp looked up, breathless, his pupils blown wide. “More than you fucking know, Colonel.”
A genuine, wolfish smile broke across Dante’s face, transforming it entirely, and he kissed him hard, a deep, consuming push of his tongue. Tripp moaned into it, one hand sliding down Dante’s stomach, past the open waistband of his trousers. He pushed inside his boxers, his fist closing around him. Dante was already fully hard, thick and hot in Tripp’s grip.
Tripp began to stroke him, a slow, knowing pump as they kissed, his thumb swiping over the head. Dante’s breath hitched, a sharp intake through his nose. He ground his hips forward into the fist, a slow, relentless rhythm. Then Tripp broke the kiss, panting. He stood there for a beat, just looking at Dante, whose expression had gone slack with need.
“What?” Dante rasped, looking almost lost without the contact.
Tripp didn’t answer. He just sank to his knees on the rough floorboards, his hands going to Dante’s open fly.
A slow smirk pulled at Dante’s mouth. “Oh? Yeah?”
Tripp smiled up at him, a wicked, eager thing. “Of course. Can’t let you do all the work and bitch at me later for it.”
He yanked Dante’s trousers and boxers down in one rough pull. Dante’s cock sprang free, thick and ruddy and curving upward. Bucky’s breath stopped. A shocking, liquid warmth flooded his own gut. Dante was huge, the size baffling, intimidating, a brutal fact of his body. Tripp didn’t pause. He leaned forward and took him into his mouth without ceremony.
The sound Dante made was a guttural, punched-out groan. His head fell back, tendons standing out in his neck. One hand fisted in Tripp’s hair, not guiding yet, just holding, anchoring himself. Tripp worked him with ruthless expertise, his head bobbing, cheeks hollowing. The wet, slick sounds filled the quiet room. Dante began to move, a shallow thrust of his hips, his grip on Tripp’s hair tightening. “Yeah, just like that,” he muttered, a raw thread of sound. “Suck it, c’mon.”
It was all so violently, viscerally hot. Bucky was glued to the crack in the door, his own body reacting with a shameful, insistent heat. Dante sounded good. He sounded fucking incredible, each choked-off grunt and low curse a revelation.
Dante’s hips began to piston faster, his control slipping. “Gonna—fuck, Trip, I’m gonna—” His voice was strained, broken.
Tripp pulled off suddenly, a wet pop breaking the air. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his own breathing ragged. “No, sir,” he said, voice rough from use. He pushed himself to his feet. “You’re fucking me before you finish.”
Dante just gave that dark smile again, all promise and teeth. He manhandled Tripp, spinning him around and bending him over the desk. Papers scattered. Tripp braced his hands flat, pushing his ass back. Dante spit into his own palm, slicked himself roughly, and then yanked Tripp’s boxers aside.
He pushed into him in one long, relentless drive. Tripp cried out, a sharp, fractured sound that melted into a low, continuous moan. Dante didn’t stop. He buried himself to the hilt, waited a trembling second, and then pulled almost all the way out before slamming back in. Hard.
And he didn’t let up. The desk legs squeaked against the floor with every thrust. Dante fucked him with a brutal, driving rhythm, each impact a wet slap of skin on skin. He was rough, exactly as Bucky had imagined he would be, all that controlled power unleashed. Tripp loved it. He pushed back against each thrust, begging in a broken stream. “Yes—fuck, right there—don’t stop, c’mon, harder—”
“You want it harder?” Dante gritted out, his voice thick with strain. He hooked an arm around Tripp’s chest, pulling him upright against his own body, never stopping the deep, punishing plunge of his hips.
“Yes! God, yes, please—”
Dante gave him more. He fucked him harder, his own groans loud in Tripp’s ear. “That what you needed? This what you thought about?”
“Every fucking night,” Tripp sobbed, clutching at the arm banded across his chest.
Any time Dante spoke, Tripp responded, and it kept driving Dante wilder, his pace becoming frantic, almost savage. He was claiming, punishing, worshipping all at once.