Chapter 4: Flashbacks
Their palms met. Skin to skin. A circuit completed.
For Bucky, the crumbling hotel vanished.
The smell hit him first—damp wool, cold mud, and the sharp, clean tang of sweat. The sound of a Coleman lantern hissing. He was standing at the flap of an officer’s tent, his heart hammering against his ribs, the frustration of the day still a hot coal in his gut.
Drill practice had been a particular kind of hell. Dante—Colonel Marcus then—had been a merciless fucking taskmaster. Bucky had fumbled a reload, his fingers clumsy with a cold he couldn’t shake. Dante had been on him in an instant, voice like a whip-crack across the frozen field.
“What the hell was that, Barnes? You planning to ask the Krauts to wait politely while you pick your nose?”
“No, sir!”
“Then do it again! And again! Until your hands remember what your goddamn head keeps forgetting!”
He’d made Bucky do push-ups in the slush until his arms trembled and his chest burned. Each time Bucky pushed up, he’d see Dante’s boots planted in the mud beside him, hear his low, relentless commentary. “Lower. Slower. You think war’s fast? It’s slow. It’s waiting. It’s your muscles screaming while you stay perfectly fucking still.”
The worst part was the heat that coiled in Bucky’s belly alongside the anger. The way Dante’s commanding voice, the sharp intelligence in those icy eyes, the sheer physical competence of him, stirred something Bucky had spent years shoving down deep. The attraction was an aggravating, unwanted current under his skin. He’d never been so confused. By the time dusk fell, he was simmering with a volatile mix of humiliation and raw, undirected want.
Then the summons came. The Colonel wants to see you in his tent.
Now, here he was. He pushed the flap aside.
Dante was leaning over a small map table, his back to the door. Shirtless. The lamplight gilded the sweat-slicked planes of his back, muscles shifting like living topography under skin marked with strange, dark inks that seemed to move in the flicker. His shoulders were tense, his hands gripping the table’s edge, veins standing in stark relief down his powerful forearms.
Bucky stopped dead, his mouth going dry. He drank in the sight, the forbidden luxury of it. His mind, traitorous and hungry, flashed an image: those hands gripping his hips with that same intensity. That strong body leaning over him, the weight of it, the command. He imagined fingers tangling in his hair, pulling just this side of pain. A jolt of pure desire, sharp and startling, went through him.
He shut it down, hard. “You wanted to see me, Sir?”
Dante turned.
The front view was worse. Better. Devastating. The light carved the definition of his chest and abdomen, shadows pooling in the dips between muscle. A cigarette dangled from his lips, a wisp of smoke curling upward. He took a long drag, the ember glowing bright, his eyes never leaving Bucky’s.
“What was the problem today, Barnes?”
Bucky’s throat closed. He had no answer that wouldn’t betray him.
Dante pushed off the table and walked toward him, slow, deliberate. He took the cigarette from his mouth, tapping ash onto the dirt floor. “I get it. Bad days happen. Trust me.” He stopped, too close. Bucky could smell him—tobacco, sweat, the peculiar ozone scent that always clung to him. “But you gotta learn to push that shit down out here. Before you get yourself or other men killed.”
Bucky just nodded, his voice a husk of itself. “Yes, Sir.” It came out low, tinged with everything he was trying to suppress: shame, frustration, a thick, syrupy want.
Dante heard it. His eyes narrowed, not in anger, but in a sudden, piercing assessment. He saw the flush on Bucky’s cheeks, the rapid pulse in his throat, the way his gaze kept snagging on his mouth, his chest, then fleeing back to the ground.
A long, silent moment stretched. The lantern hissed.
Then Dante’s expression shifted. The stern colonel melted away, replaced by something older, hungrier, infinitely more dangerous. He closed the final inch of space.
He closed the final inch of space.
“What’s the problem now, Barnes?” he said, his voice slightly lower, making Bucky’s stomach burn more intensely.
“N-nothing, sir,” he said, he knew his face was red, he felt the heat burning him alive. Dante stepped closer, Bucky couldn’t move. “No?” Dante asked, dangerously low.
Bucky knew, he knew Dante knew, he knew he wanted Dante, he knew he wanted his hands gripping him, so he moved.
Bucky kissed Dante hungrily and hard. He was so scared Dante would move away, but he didn’t, instead Dante’s hands gripping came in to cradle Bucky’s neck and pull him deeper into the kiss. Bucky’s hands started wandering on Dante’s body, hands finding the button on his jeans, he undid them, Dante did the same to Bucky.
The worn denim gave way, metal button cool against Bucky’s shaking fingers. Dante’s own hands, steadier, made quick work of Bucky’s uniform trousers, the heavy wool pooling at his boots with a finality that stole his breath. Bucky groaned softly into the kiss, a raw, needy sound he didn’t recognize as his own, his hips jerking forward of their own volition to meet the shocking, sublime friction of Dante’s palm.
Dante guided him back without breaking the kiss, his mouth a heated promise, until the backs of Bucky’s knees hit the edge of the army cot. He sat Bucky down, the canvas sighing under his weight. Dante pulled back just enough to speak, his lips brushing Bucky’s with each word, their breath mingling in the cold air. “You haven’t done this with a man before, have you?”
Bucky just shook his head no, his throat too tight, his world narrowed to the points of contact: Dante’s hands on his shoulders, Dante’s knee between his thighs. He couldn’t find his voice.
“Any time you’re uncomfortable,” Dante murmured, his thumb stroking the frantic pulse in Bucky’s neck. “Any time you want to stop, you tell me. I’ll stop. Okay?”
“Okay,” Bucky whispered, the word all air.
Then Dante dropped to his knees.
The sight alone was almost enough. The powerful colonel, the untouchable creature, on his knees in the dirt floor of the tent, his tattooed hands sliding up Bucky’s bare thighs. He hooked his fingers in the waistband of Bucky’s shorts and pulled them down, letting his cock spring free, fully hard and already leaking. Dante didn’t hesitate. He leaned in, his breath hot, and licked a slow, torturous stripe from base to tip.
Bucky’s head thumped back against the tent pole, a shattered moan tearing from him. Dante’s mouth was a wet, wicked heaven. He teased at first, swirling his tongue around the head, sucking just the tip, his hands holding Bucky’s hips firm against the cot. Then he took him deeper, his throat working, until Bucky felt the head nudge the back of that hot, willing mouth. Dante’s eyes, blazing blue, locked on his the entire time, watching him unravel.
It was the best head Bucky had ever had. It wasn’t just skill; it was a fucking revelation. Dante worked him with a ruthless, perfect rhythm, one hand sliding to cup his balls, rolling them gently, the other moving to press a slick finger against his entrance. Bucky came with a choked shout, his vision whiting out, his body seizing as he spilled down Dante’s throat. Dante took it all, swallowing every pulse, until Bucky was limp and trembling.
Before the aftershocks fully subsided, Dante pulled him up. He turned Bucky, his hands firm, and guided him to bend over the cot, the rough canvas scratching his forearms. Dante’s hard body pressed against his back, his own cock a thick, insistent pressure against Bucky’s ass. “Remember,” Dante said, his voice low and rough in Bucky’s ear. “Any time. I stop.”
“Mhm,” Bucky managed, pushing back against him, his whole body alight with a new, terrifying hunger.
He heard the click of a cap, felt cool liquid drip down his cleft. Then Dante’s finger, slick and patient, pressed inside him. The stretch burned, a sharp, foreign fullness that made Bucky gasp into the pillow. Dante worked him open slowly, one finger, then two, curling them until they brushed a spot that sent electric jolts up Bucky’s spine. “Fuck,” Bucky breathed, hips stuttering.
“Breathe, Barnes,” Dante said gently, his other hand stroking Bucky’s flank. He withdrew his fingers.
The blunt, broad head of Dante’s cock pressed against him. “Okay?” Dante asked, his voice thick with a lust so palpable it vibrated in the air.
“Okay,” Bucky whispered, and it was a prayer, a surrender.
Dante pushed in.
The burn was eclipsed by a fullness so profound it stole thought. Bucky moaned, long and loud, into the musty pillow, his fingers clawing at the canvas. Dante seated himself fully, hips flush against Bucky’s ass, and went perfectly still, letting him adjust, letting the sensation transmute from pain to a deep, aching need. “Jesus, you’re tight,” Dante gritted out, his forehead dropping between Bucky’s shoulder blades.
Then he started to move.
A slow, dragging pull out, then a smooth, relentless push back in. Each thrust hit that perfect, jolting spot, building a coil of pressure low in Bucky’s gut. “That’s it,” Dante praised, his voice gone dark and filthy. “Take it so fuckin’ good for me. Knew you would. Knew you’d be perfect.”
The words, crude and tender, unraveled Bucky further. He was hard again, his own cock dripping onto the canvas below. “More,” he begged, the word ragged. “Please, Dante, please.”
“Tell me what you want.”
“Harder. Fuck me harder.”
“Harder. Fuck me harder.”
A rough sound tore from Dante’s throat, part growl, part prayer. He wrapped a powerful arm around Bucky’s chest, locking them together, and obeyed.
The rhythm changed instantly, the slow, deep rolls shattering into something relentless and punishing. The cot frame slammed against the tent pole with each driving thrust, the sound a violent, metallic counterpoint to the wet, slapping noise of their joining. Bucky’s world dissolved into pure sensation: the bite of the canvas on his cheek, the unbearable stretch and burn as Dante took him apart, the terrifying, glorious surrender of all control.
He moaned into the pillow, a continuous, broken stream of sound that was half sob, half worship. Every nerve was alive, screaming.
Dante’s mouth was at his ear, his breath scalding. “That’s it. Take it. You feel fuckin’ incredible.” His hips pistoned, each impact jolting Bucky forward. “So tight around my cock, Barnes. Clenching like you never wanna let go.”
He angled deeper, a subtle shift, and Bucky saw stars. A shocked, raw cry was punched from his lungs. “Right there, baby?” Dante whispered, his rough, deep voice sandpaper and smoke against Bucky’s sweat-slicked skin.
“Y-y-yes,” Bucky started, the word stuttering out of him on the next brutal thrust. “Oh my god, yes.”
Dante zeroed in on that singular, devastating point, fucking into it with unerring precision. The coil in Bucky’s gut wound tighter, a spring about to snap. Pleasure, sharp and almost painful, radiated from his core, threatening to short-circuit his brain.
“You gonna cum for me, Barnes?” Dante’s voice was a filthy, dark promise. “All over my bed?”
The image, the possession in those words, sent a violent shudder through Bucky. He was teetering on the very edge, his knuckles white where they gripped the cot.
Dante’s next words unraveled him completely. “Be a good little soldier for me,” he said, his tone dropping into something even hotter, more commanding. “And cum.”
And Bucky did. He came. Hard.
A white-hot detonation tore through him, wringing a guttural shout from his throat as he spent himself against the rough canvas, his body convulsing in Dante’s iron grip. He moaned into the pillow, hard, the sound muffled and desperate as the waves racked him.
Dante fucked him through it, his strokes becoming shorter, harder, more frantic, dragging the orgasm out until Bucky was whimpering from oversensitivity. Then Dante’s rhythm broke. A ragged, shattered groan ripped from his chest, and Bucky felt the hot, sudden flood of his release deep inside, marking him. Dante kept moving, thrusting through his own climax, then a dozen more times after. Deep, long, possessive strokes, milking himself, his forehead pressed between Bucky’s shoulder blades as his big body shuddered in completion.
The tent fell silent save for their ragged, echoing breaths.
Slowly, carefully, Dante pulled out and collapsed beside him on the narrow cot, the canvas sagging under their combined weight. The cold air felt startling on Bucky’s overheated skin. For a long moment, neither moved, lost in the aftershocks.
Then Dante’s arm slid around him. He pulled Bucky back against his chest, their sweat-slick skin sticking together. He pressed a kiss, surprisingly soft, to the crown of Bucky’s head.
“You did so good for me,” Dante murmured into his hair.
The words, tender and raw, lodged in Bucky’s heart. He just nodded, unable to speak, and let his eyes fall shut. The memory held him, vivid and warm, for one more heartbeat.
Then the scent of rot and dust replaced sweat and canvas.
The tent dissolved, its warmth leaching away into the hotel’s pervasive chill. He was kneeling on cold, gritty marble, not a rough army cot. Dante’s hand was still gripping his, but now they were both in the present, in the ruins, the ghost of that first time hanging between them like a third presence.
Bucky opened his eyes. He was still facing Dante, who had not moved from the chair. Their joined hands were the only bridge across seventy years of hell.
Dante’s eyes were open, watching him. The hellfire was gone, replaced by a reflection of Bucky’s own stunned ache. A single, clear track marked a path through the grime on Dante’s cheek, mirroring the one on Bucky’s.
“You found me,” Dante said softly, his voice hoarse. It wasn’t a question about the memory. It was about the field. The body. The tarp. “After the blast.”
Bucky could only nod again, his throat sealed shut by the confluence of past pleasure and present grief.
“You never said.” Dante’s thumb stroked across Bucky’s knuckles, a gentle echo of the earlier caress.
“You were dead,” Bucky finally managed, the words scraping out. “What was there to say?” He looked down at their hands, the contrast of skin and ink against his own calloused palm. “I carried your dog tags for a month. Until the train.”
The confession hung in the dusty air. Steve, standing a few paces away, sucked in a quiet breath. Tony had gone very still, all his usual commentary withered in the face of this.
Dante’s fingers tightened.