#happy belated 40th!! to Seb

[l223m0nade]

Novelty

Here it is! Just a little fic of Bucky in Wakanda having flower allergies and being a cute mess. 🌼💐🌸🤧 hope yall enjoy!!!!

           Steve and Bucky walked along a path through Wakandan jungle, in the thick, lush forest that lay between Birnin Zana and the border village where Bucky spent much of his time.

           The topics of their conversation ranged from Shuri’s genius-teenager antics in her lab, to Steve and the other fugitive Avengers’ globetrotting stealth missions, to the finer points of goat herding Bucky was learning, to shared memories from the past they were rediscovering together.

           “God, he was a sonofabitch,” Bucky chuckled as they finished recalling a story about a prank they’d pulled on Murray, the bully of a dock manager Bucky had worked under in ’37.

           Steve was guffawing with the memory, but noticed as Bucky scrunched his nose and then turned to the right, sneezing a soft, sudden “h-tchssh!” into his wrist and stumbling from it just a little.

           The sight didn’t worry him—Bucky had only been out of cryo a few weeks, and while he was mostly adjusted to the missing weight of the metal arm, occasionally some residual tipsiness showed through in his balance. Sneezing was a little unusual for a supersoldier, but Steve was too busy giggling to give it any thought.

           “I can’t believe I’d almost forgotten that!” he gasped.

           The combined joy of having someone to reminisce about the lost world of his youth with, that person being Bucky, and Bucky chiming in to fill gaps in Steve’s memories, was enough to make him giddy. He felt like he could laugh all day.

           “The whole thing was YOUR idea!” Bucky exclaimed. His own laughter was still dying down, until his breath caught, and his head snapped aside as more sneezes urgently overtook him: “hh-itsch—itsch! ITschoo!”

           Eyebrows raised, feeling the rise of his awkwardly intense brand of worry where Bucky was concerned, Steve said, “Bless y—”

           “Tschoo! ih-hitschiew!” Bucky’s nose interrupted as he sneezed yet again.

           “Jeez, Buck! What’s got you doing that?” The last time he’d heard that many sneezes from his friend, maybe the last time he’d heard any, had been sometime like ’41, the last time he’d passed one of his interminable winter colds along to Bucky when they lived together in the drafty tenement apartment, before both of them changed forever into heroes that didn’t catch the sniffles. At least he thought they didn’t. Even then, as he recalled, they hadn’t sounded like these quick, ticklish, insistent flurries.

           Bucky sniffed and rubbed his nose furiously while casting his gaze all around. “’S that fuckin—where is it…” he muttered. He was searching the surrounding vegetation for something. “There! Augh.” He pointed off the path. “See—those purple—h-tchoo—flowers,” interrupting himself with a small uncovered sneeze.

           Steve peered in the direction he indicated and saw a small thicket a few yards off the trail of what looked like ferns festooned with purple blossoms, bobbing in the gentle breeze. He turned an incredulous look to Bucky, who was still sniffing itchily and rubbing at his nose. “What, you’re allergic? Can that even happen to us?”

           “Apparently so!” scoffed Bucky, waving his hand at his rapidly pinkening nose and watery eyes. “Far as I remember I never had an allergy before in my life. But there’s all kinds of plants here that don’t grow anywhere else. Snff! Finally figured out it was those ones —hih— makin’ me…sneeze…” he trailed off,  but shook his head and rubbed his nose with a vengeance and managed to shake the tickle off. “Thought I knew which spots to steer clear of. Now I’m gonna be like this- SNFF!- for the next three damn…hh-hours…

...huh…hh-h-Gnxtch! Mmptch—mmptch—HENKtchiew! Huh-esshha! Fuck!” He was overtaken by rapid sneezes that he tried to stifle into his hand, only half-succeeding, before letting the last one out with exasperation.

            “Wow. Bless you! You alright?” There was that worry again. Ever since they’d been reunited it was all Steve could do at any given moment to stop himself from hovering over Bucky, flapping his arms like a literal mother hen.

             Bucky shot him an amused look through his narrowed watering eyes, like he knew just what he was thinking. “SNfff-snfff! Been a whole lot worse, pal, trust me.”

            The words might have been wry, but he said them sincerely, with his warm, crinkle-eyed smile, the one that had been so familiar on the Bucky of the past, but was new and miraculous to see spreading across his face here and now. It had only reappeared these last few weeks, since Bucky had been brought out of cryo, tested the Winter Soldier trigger words, and found himself free for the first time in 70 years. Steve breathed through a surge of emotion and kept himself from whooping, grabbing Bucky and spinning him around, or anything else he felt like doing at the sight of that smile.

           “I sound like you used to in May,” Bucky remarked, sniffing again, pulling out a bright scrap of cloth and blowing his nose quietly. He quirked his eyebrows questioningly at Steve, asking for confirmation —“Right?”— without saying anything.

           “Ugh,” Steve said, remembering, “yeah, but I was even more of a mess.” Bucky chuckled, stowing his handkerchief to rub his hand over his whole face repeatedly. “Which is how I know that—” he swatted at Bucky’s hand, “only makes it worse.”

           “It itches,” Bucky growled petulantly, giving his eye a final rub, and grumbling, “like you ever followed any advice about feeling better when it was you.” He looked like he was about to embark on a Stubborn Sick Small Steve tale from the winters of the 1930s, but then paused, blinking rapidly, and ducked his head, to the left this time, with a quick ­“hih-kshchoo!”

           Since he lacked an arm to sneeze into on that side, the soft spray caught Steve on the elbow and forearm, and he yelped a bit in surprise at the sensation.

           “Sorry!” Bucky exclaimed, sniffing and laughing and not sounding very sorry at all. Steve was glad he wasn’t embarrassed, and despite his initial reaction he’d let Bucky sneeze on him a hundred times if it’d make him laugh like that.

           “Every once in a while, I still forget,” he explained, gesturing to the empty space on his left side. “I’m used to doing most everything one-handed now, but I guess not snee—hih—heezing…heh...” he scrunched his nose and hitched, scrambling to grab the handkerchief and sneeze into it, “huh—tdschoo! eh-mptschuh! huh-gnxtchoo! etchumpff—tchmpff!” He emerged sniffling from the cloth, looking ridiculously pink and bleary, blinking and shaking his head and getting caught totally off guard by one last little tickly tsshiew! that burst out before he could do anything to cover it.

           Steve knew well, from his own experience before the serum: allergy attacks were annoying, really annoying, to go through. But, God, he couldn’t help it— he snorted and then let out a peal of laughter as Bucky glared his itchy eyes at him. The scowl remained as Steve stifled his giggles and Bucky blew his nose, but Steve could tell he was smiling under the cloth.

           “You poor guy,” he chortled and then dodged with a squawk as Bucky feinted whipping him with his sodden hanky. “C’mon, Sneezy, let’s get back to your place. I’ll show you how nice that wet cloth you used to put over my eyes feels.”