Giant Sneezing Steve Rodgers Crackfic

[Mr. Black Cherry Berry Tea]

MCU, Steve/Bucky, AU.

Just what it says on the tin.

This isn’t really canon compliant with Infinity War or Endgame, lmao.

Apologies to comic book and MCU fans everywhere.

—

“Ahhh… AHHHHHH…”

“Oh shit, hit the deck, Stevie’s gonna…” Bucky said.

The other two just looked at him like he was crazy.

“What are you talking about?”

“AAAAHHHHH… AHHHHHHHHHHHH… O-out of the…”

“Stevie’s gonna blow!”

The two strangers just stared, like they had no clue what was about to happen. For a second, the realization crossed Bucky’s mind, but he only had half a second to realize, think about how bad this was gonna hurt, and lunge towards them, putting enough strength to knock Captain America to the ground in his leap…

“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH-CCCCHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!”

Classic Stevie sneeze, a perfectly enunciated ah-choo, as American as apple pie and with all the power of a good old-fashioned American detonation of a few tons of good-old fashion American TNT.

When the dust settled—and it was a good thing the dust didn’t set him off again, maybe the years had pushed Steve past his allergy to plaster dust—Bucky was on top of, well, Bucky as well as Steve, the other Steve. And of course, a large chunk of the wall of the SHIELD safe house they were in was blasted to kingdom come. And Bucky’s shoulder hurt.

“Sorry, fellas.” Stevie said, obviously trying to put Captain into his tone, though his flushed cheeks gave him away, as ever. He was always embarrassed when he gave into his allergies accidentally, back when he was tiny little Stevie and after the serum, when he was big, massive Stevie. Tiny Stevie had been embarrassed of his body, of the harsh fits of sneezing that seemed too powerful for his small frame, and yet oddly gentle. Massive Steve was embarrassed of losing control of a body with enough power to smash through walls… which of course he’d done, again. As usual.

“Don’t be sorry Steve. That was a little one for you. At least you didn’t blast the whole building down.” Bucky said, walking up to Steve and rubbing his back. “And you gotta let ‘em out, you know holding it back doesn’t do anybody any good, not now. We’re not trying to stealth our way through Germany anymore.”

Meanwhile the other Steve and the other Bucky just stood, mouths hanging wide open, astonished at what they’d just witnessed. At least, they did for a moment, until the Winter Soldier’s eyes narrowed in a way that meant “threat”, and Bucky Barnes looked up at Steve Rodgers in a way that meant “threat?” and Captain America assured went into “assessing the situation” mode, with a soft “it’s all right, Buck.”

“So… what exactly just happened here?” Other Steve asked, and Bucky had to bite his cheek to avoid laughing. He couldn’t help, though, elbowing his Steve in the ribs and saying, “I told you so.”

Steve just rolled his eyes, and said straightforwardly, “I sneezed.”

The Other Steve just stared him down, obviously not satisfied with that answer. Bucky was really fighting not to laugh now. “I told you, punk, of all the Steve Rodgerses in all the universes, you’re the only one where the A in Captain A stands for…”

Steve put one hand up, and used the other to elbow Bucky in the ribs, much harder than Bucky had elbowed him, which set the dark-haired man back a few paces, doubled over. That hurt!

“Jerk.” Steve said.

“Punk.” Buck spat back.

The Other Steve was rubbing his temples by now, obviously exasperated and in part fighting to avoid smiling himself, the old Brooklyn banter having put him in an old Brooklyn mood. “Alright, alright. Calm down you two. Listen, Rogers,” Other Steve said, walking towards his doppelgänger with narrowing eyes. “we both know that wasn’t just a sneeze. Are you telling me that in whatever alternate universe we’ve stumbled ourselves into, I’m a walking, building-destroying uncontrollable biological weapon?”

“Well, not completely uncontrollable, we have some tricks…” Bucky started, before Steve cut in with, “Yep, Cap. That’s about the size of it. It comes in handy more than you’d think.”

Other Steve’s eyes narrowed further. “You all got a Hulk here?”

“Yep.”

“You two must be a holy terror together.”

“There’s a few buildings that would agree with you, yeah.”

Other Steve paused, clearly considering it in a Captain America way the tactical pros and cons. Then he frowned. “But how often does… that happen.” Other Steve said, gesturing towards the wall. It wasn’t the totally reinforced steel of a primary SHIELD safehouse, but it the usual sturdy construction of a SHIELD lab, and he had just witnessed an alternate universe version of himself sneeze a hole through it large enough for two Hulks and a Thor to walk through comfortably, side by side.

Back in the day, Bucky would have stepped in to defend Stevie’s honor but even though there was a blush high in Stevie’s cheeks that Bucky liked to think only he could see—though if there were any other folks presently in the universe who’d see it, it was Other Bucky and Other Steve—Bucky knew that Steve was capable of explaining his whole nasal… situation just fine. Even if it did deeply embarrass him.

“I do my best to keep things under wraps. But, can I assume you also had pretty severe allergies as a youngster?” Steve asked. His doppleganger nodded. “Well while it seems that for most other versions of Steve Rodgers the serum destroyed those allergies, for me it didn’t. My allergies haven’t gotten any better. If anything they got more severe, more sensitive when I got the serum. These sneezes are this super-sized body responding to any threat it sees, with, uh, pretty extreme prejudice." He said, with a quick gesture towards the wall. "I can fight it, and I do. Bucky and I have a few tricks when what I can do fails. But honestly, from time to time I lose control. I can’t always fight my allergies. So, when I can’t fight the sneezes, I assess. I’ve gotten very, very good at assessing the difference between a sneeze that would do that…” he said, gesturing at the hole in the wall, “and a sneeze that would bring the ceiling down on our heads. That sneeze was the former. If I had tried to fight it off though…” Steve pointed to the ceiling and mimed it falling down. “Sometimes a controlled detonation is an acceptable outcome. Does that make sense, soldier?”

Other Steve still eyed Stevie uncertainly, but Stevie had gotten better at this, Bucky thought. Right after he got the serum, nearly blew New York City to bits with a fit of sun-induced sneezes and got shunted to show duty as far away from feathers, fans, and flowers as possible, Stevie had been terribly awkward: about his body, about his allergies, about his powers. But now, to see him so confident… it warmed Bucky’s heart a little, it did. And if his confidence could stand up to Captain America’s scrutiny—even that of a different Captain America—well, Bucky had to give credit where credit was due.

At last, Other Steve nodded. “I don’t like it, but I get it. Bucky knows,” Other Steve said, tossing his head back towards his Bucky. “before I got the serum, I got sneezin’ fits that felt like they could turn my lungs inside out. And if my allergies were even worse, and in this body… I get it. You’re makin’ the best of it, I know that much.” Other Steve said, Brooklyn creeping into the tones of his voice, as it often did when he reminisced on old times.

“Well glahhh… g-glad you g-get it, soldier, cause…” Steve was already scrunching his nose. Maybe he wasn’t so immune to plaster dust as Bucky had hoped.

“Step back boys!” Bucky called out, “you wanna be behind him when he’s about to blow…”

Steve walked towards the hole he’d created—clearly what was coming on was closer to a “blow down the house” level sneeze than the previous “hole in the walls” sneeze.

“hhhEEEEHHHHHhhhh… HHHHUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhh… b-biHHHHHhhh… big wuhhHHHHHHHH… HUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHH…”

“Oh shit. Did he just say…” Bucky warned. “Oh shit. Guys, uh… you might wanna take cover…”

“HHHHHHHHHHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH..” it was a vast, smooth gasp in, his chest swelling perceptibly as more air and more air and more air fllled Captain America’s super-strength lungs, preparing to be expelled with all the strength in Captain America’s body. He’d walked right to the edge of the hole he blew in the wall. Several large trees swayed in the breeze as Steve sucked in air, leaves flying off in a swirl of colors, before being joined by twigs snapped off, and then branches.

Bucky shouted over the immense bellows of Steve’s inward gasps: “When they get this big, he pulls in a lot of debris, make sure you don’t get hit!”

And indeed, soon it wasn’t just small branches flying, it was a wall of dust big enough for a dust storm, it was rocks dredged up from the ground, and trees were being uprooted even by his heavy breaths. It was like being in the eye of a hurricane. It seemed as though the entire world was swirling around the storm system that had Stevie’s itchy, irritated nose as its epicenter. As terrifying as Steve’s big sneezes could be, Bucky noticed, not for the first time, there was something almost beautiful about it, about how much power the formerly-little, presently-huge Steve Rogers was uncontrollably summoning, and how something far far far tinier pushed him to this uncontrollable precipice.

It was just a few more huge gasps, each one seeming to shake the building’s foundations: “HUUUUUUUH! HEEEUUHHHHHHHHHH! HUUUUH!”

And then the explosion.

“HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”

He doubled over with the force of it, and Bucky couldn’t help but notice—even amidst all the chaos—the round bubble of Steve’s butt, practically shaking in sympathy as the roar of a sneeze mastered his heroic frame. He aimed it towards the hole in the wall, but the force of the sneeze blew an even wider section of the wall out impossibly far, further than the ordinary eye could see, though once the dust settled and Steve recovered, this crew could spot where the debris of the sneeze landed what seemed like a mile away. That debris included every tree in a hundred feet, uprooted and tossed like a twig from the wild destructive force of Steve’s sneeze. If he’d aimed the wrong way, he’d have probably blasted the whole safehouse a mile down the road. It was at least a Hulk level of destruction, but Bucky wouldn’t want to lay a wager either way. It would come down to how mad the Hulk was—and how allergic Steve was.

As the dust cleared, Other Steve and Other Bucky stood up from their crouched position, surveying the damage. With a whistle, Other Steve said, “that, I take it, was a big one.”

That slight blush was heating Steve’s cheeks again. “It was above-average” was his very diplomatic response. Obviously Other Steve knew a political response when he heard one, but obviously decided to let it slide.

For a second, Bucky noticed Steve’s nose twitching, and he thought he might succumb to another sneeze… but then he straightened up, gave a hard sniff, and smiled sheepishly at the group, one hand behind his head, looking for all the world like little Stevie from Brooklyn, having stolen from the cookie jar.

“So, uh, yeah. That’s why they call me Captain Allergy.”

—
Two things that didn’t make it into this fic that I nonetheless wish to share:

Steve’s sneezes get bigger every time he tries to hold back. He didn’t let the first sneeze out full force, ergo the even bigger second sneeze. And eventually the sneeze he fought off at the end (bucky was right that was definitely a nostril flare) is gonna come out. That will be a big one.

(Other) Bucky: “So that’s your secret? You’re always sneezy?”

Edited September 26, 2019 by Mr. Black Cherry Berry Tea

[SweaterWeather]

Of all the crackfic I didn't know I needed in this world...  This was... I mean, is it lame to just say Wowza? You managed to capture not only one, but TWO versions of Bucky and Steve flawlessly, and I love it. Also, I'd doubly love to know about these tricks Stevie and Buck have to er, helping our dear sneezy Cap? 

[Snzlover]

please do more of a buildup i loved this!!!!!

[Show&tell]

@Mr. Black Cherry Berry Tea 

This is absolutely heavenly!  😃

I would love to see this continued in some way.  That final nostril twitch has my heart beating fast haha

You are a phenomenal writer