Hellooo! I hope your holiday season has been going well!
Unfortunately I have caught covid and am being miserable and I’m desperately craving some sick Bucky and caring Steve. Could I possibly request a fic? Only if you have time and want to!! Otherwise I’ll keep rereading your existent fics 😅❤️
Hi friend!!! I'm so sorry you're sick but I'm so happy to get this (my first! 😃) ask! Something's been knocking around in my head involving a cold with little fits of sneezes that start out super light and quick but get heavier, so here's where that inspo got me with our sweet blorbo.
(I set this in a canon-divergent AU where the Winter Soldier came in before Age of Ultron and everyone’s fine and happy at the New Avengers Facility in upstate NY, just fyi, don’t really need context it’s just a bit of fluff)
The mission turned out a complete success, though it was hard-earned. Bucky felt his shoulders slowly start to relax as he dumped his wet dirty gear on the quinjet floor with a sigh of relief. He looked over to where Sam was patching up Steve, who’d taken a piece of shrapnel to the thigh, and determined that Sam was giving him enough shit for being reckless and cocky for the time being without his help. Steve caught his eye with a sheepish smile and he smirked in response, shaking his head gently and turning to his soothing post-mission routine of cleaning and organizing weapons and every last bit of gear.
He was dog tired, and cold, and achy, which was a little unusual, as was the scratchy sore inflamed feeling in his throat and the back of his nose. He brushed it off and began methodically wiping down knives.
He was halfway through disassembling his rifle when the slight itch in his face suddenly morphed into a tickle in his nose. The sneeze caught him by surprise enough that he barely had time to turn his face to the side. “Hhhtish!” It came out light and quick and unsatisfying, and he had to sneeze again immediately after. “Hhh-hh-Tsschu!” It felt like there was a third, but then the urgent tickle backed down. Didn’t go away, though, just fluttered teasingly between his nose and throat. He frowned and rubbed his whole face roughly. That was annoying. He refocused on the equipment spread out in front of him.
Steve watched Bucky diligently clean every last weapon and bit of gear, including some not his own. This was familiar all the way back to the war: it was how he came down from the tension of the mission, how he kept from overthinking about what could have happened or what might happen next time. He’d told Steve something his first sharpshooting instructor had imparted during training: “There’s almost nothing you can control in war, but you can keep your rifle clean, and a clean rifle’ll shoot better, so that right there’s something.”
He felt pride swell in him. Bucky wasn’t a regular fixture on their mission roster. He spent most of his time on training and equipment R&D at the upstate facility. Fighting didn’t have the magnet-pull for him that it did for Steve; he could handle anything, but sometimes combat rattled memories loose that he preferred to keep quietly packed away. And he contributed enough to the team’s successes just by imparting his vast skill set and helping stress-test armor and weapons.
Sometimes, however, something from that skill set was crucial to a mission. This time, it was the stealth and resourcefulness that had the Winter Soldier known as a ghost for decades. To infiltrate the facility undetected and open a backdoor for the Avengers, Bucky had trekked for two days through snow-covered woods and dove to the bottom of a lake full of floating ice chunks, to find a water inlet pipe barely big enough to squeeze through until he reached larger unused half-flooded access tunnels. Eventually he’d made it to a server room, a silent shadow taking out patrolling guards without raising alarm, and there he’d input the code to scramble the perimeter security. Once that was done the rest of them came in hard and fast, and Bucky threw himself into the fight alongside them.
It had gone perfectly, but Steve was tired, and he’d only been there for the grand finale. Bucky must be exhausted. And cold.
Equipment finally put away, he settled next to Steve with a sigh. He slung an arm around him and Bucky leaned into the casual embrace, clearing his throat and rubbing his face with a dry sniff. “You’re still in all this wet stuff?” Steve asked, feeling the stiff cold of the tac uniform. “Buck, you must be freezing.”
He just shrugged. “Be colder to change in here. ‘Sides, we’re almost back, no need to show off my skivvies,” he rolled his eyes at Clint, who having no such compunctions was now lounging in a purple sweatsuit.
“The hell I’d’ve caught from you for staying in wet things…” Steve shook his head.
“Yeah, yeah. I earned my right to hypocrisy putting up with you all those years,” Bucky replied loftily.
“Anyone mind if we turn the heat up a little?” Steve asked to the room at large, and a moment later a soft gust of warm air was coming from behind them. Bucky gave him a look like he was being ridiculous, but he relaxed a bit more and gave a little shiver at the warmth. Steve smiled, pleased with himself.
A moment later, Bucky gave a confused little look, his eyes fluttered and his breath caught, and he twisted quickly to the side to half-catch a quick, soft “hhhtssh” against his shoulder. Steve could feel his chest move with a few shallow hitching breaths before he sneezed a second, fuller “huh-Huhtsschoo!” tucked into his forearm.
“Bless you!” said Steve, rubbing his back. “See, you did get chilled.”
Bucky shot him a warning look but the threat in it was dampened by the way he looked like he still needed to sneeze. It puttered out into a few dry coughs, and he rubbed his nose hard, which just succeeded in turning it pink.
“Hmm.” Steve frowned. “Are you getting sick?”
Bucky just scowled. “Fussy. Ever since you got big, I swear…”
But he relaxed another fraction into Steve, let his tiredness show a little more, and Steve felt vindicated, if still a little worried. “Turnabout is fair play, pal.” Bucky had a lot of blankets and tea and soup in his near future. Ever since he first learned they were somehow both alive in this century, PUT BUCKY IN BLANKETS AND HUG AND KISS HIM had been a more or less constant siren going off in Steve’s head, and he indulged it whenever he got the chance.
Less than two hours later, they were back in their shared quarters. Bucky had unobtrusively stifled his sneezes throughout debrief, but he was too tired to try and resist the fact that he was coming down with a cold now that it was just him and Steve. His head ached, his chest felt scratchy with occasional nagging coughs, and his whole face felt stuffed up and tender. It felt like no amount of warmth and rest would satisfy this achy, shivery feeling, and the feeling that he might be about to sneeze was pretty much constant now. It only sometimes followed through, and he kept getting surprised by little fits.
“Hehtsshh, hhh-heh-hetsshoo! Huh...huhh—huhhtchumpf!” He groaned as he straightened. He’d barely gotten his boots off before those caught him.
“Go on, get in a hot shower,” Steve directed. “I’ll grab some of your cozy clothes to throw on after.”
“Sheep pants,” he grumbled, shuffling off to the bathroom. They were the warmest.
“Of course the sheep pants,” scoffed Steve, “what do I look like, a shmuck?”
In the shower, he tried to focus on how good the hot water felt, instead of on how runny and tickly the steam made his nose. He let a few light, teasing, spraying sneezes out freely as he stepped out, dried off, and rushed to blow his nose, which was sort of productive but mostly just underlined how congested he was getting.
He smiled at the socks, underwear, hoodie, and thick soft fleece pants with sleeping sheep printed on them, that Steve had left out for him. Just as began to pull the sweatshirt over his head, his nose twitched precariously.
“Oh, co—hehh—come on,” he muttered, stuck ridiculously with his sweater around his head but paralyzed by the intense tickle in his nose, which decided to tease him instead of getting the sneeze over with. He scrunched and wiggled his nose against the fuzzy fabric he was trapped in. “snff...hhh, ehh...ehh—heh...hehhh...ehh—hhyISHuhh!” He growled, finally popped his head through the collar, and trundled out of the bedroom towards the sound of Steve in the kitchen trying to one-up the mother-hen coddling that Bucky Barnes had perfected in the 1930s.
Steve made tea and perused their canned soups while listening to Bucky snuffle and sneeze throughout the process of showering and changing, feeling a mixture of fond exasperation, tender concern, and bashful arousal which threatened to turn him pink. He didn’t like Bucky being exhausted and uncomfortable, but the rare sight of him all vulnerable and tickly-sneezy had always...done things to him.
And he certainly looked and sounded that way now, in soft clothes with towel-dried hair and tired, red-rimmed eyes, coming up behind Steve’s left to hook his chin on his shoulder and slide his arm around his waist with a sigh, a sniff, a cough, and another sigh. He watched Steve pour hot water over the teabag and add a spoon of honey, and then Steve twisted to kiss his forehead and try to subtly evaluate it for fever-heat. Maybe? He was never much of a nurse compared to his Ma and Buck.
“Go park yourself on that couch,” he murmured to Bucky, who gave a little raspy chuckle ending in a groan.
“Once I do, I’mb ndot getting back up for the rest of the day,” his voice had a different deeper resonance and he was so much more congested. Steve was about to turn and fold him up in a giant tender hug when he tensed with a little gasp and “ehtshoo,” sneezed right into his shoulder, no time to turn away and cover like he generally did out of what Steve considered excessive politeness. “Shit, sorry,” he said in a breathy quaver, as Steve continued his turn. He shook his head in warning, “snff, I gotta—hhh—snee-huhh—I’mb gonna huh-huh...huhhaaTSHhiew! Snff-snff uhh...sndeeze...hehh...again! EhhTISHooo!”
Steve realized he was just standing there, poleaxed by the sight and sound of Bucky’s completely lost battle with his relentlessly tickling nose, the way his voice pitched as he tried to get words out ahead of his sneezes. He was definitely blushing hot pink by now. He shook himself and cast about before finding a tissue box and handing a couple to Bucky, who gave him a bleary grateful look with his nose still buried in his sleeve, hitching on the cusp of a fourth sneeze. It teased him even longer than the others, until he looked up blinking rapidly and finally shuddered into it: “Ihhh-hihhh-hIHktcshhOO!” He almost lost his balance with how it bent him at the waist and how tired he was.
“Bless you, honey,” Steve cooed as he finally got his arms around him, and as Bucky groaned and gave a pitiful nose blow. “That was a great demonstration of exactly why you should spend the whole day on the couch.”
With blankets. Steve got him propped up on pillows on their massive couch, dashed off and returned with an armload of different colors and fabrics, all soft and warm, and proceeded to burrito Bucky as he chuckled and coughed and batted at him. His eye-rolling and scoffing was undermined by the way he snuggled deeper into the bundle of warmth with obvious relief.
Suddenly he stiffened with a pained look and took a deep hitching breath, nose quivering, threatened by yet another sneeze. After a long frozen moment, he sighed as the tickle deserted him, and gave his aching sinuses a rub. “God. I really do have a cold,” he croaked, and then coughed a couple times.
“Yeah, sweets,” Steve said tenderly, stroking his hair, “but I’m gonna take good care of you.” Then he leapt up and dashed to the kitchen and back. “Here’s your tea. I’m about to heat up soup, and you need to eat a bowl before you nap. What sounds good—chicken noodle? Chicken and rice? That Thai coconut stuff?”
Bucky gave him a quizzical smile and chuckled softly. “Aren’t you the guy who tells people, ‘If you get killed, walk it off’?”
Steve didn’t know or care what his face was doing right now, but once in a while Sam told him he had something called “crazy eyes.” They were probably going to team up on making fun of him when Bucky got better. “You need more pillows. And I forgot tissues!”
“Steve, baby—”
“Stay there and drink tea!” He said in his Cap voice, rushing off to the sound of Bucky’s raspy laughter.
