As of yesterday, the sequel reached equal length to Gravesen. Seeing as there's still no end in sight, I can safely say we're on track for a story that's a decent bit longer. I also want to take this opportunity to talk a little bit about the format that this sequel will take, because it's going to be very different than Gravesen. That story told the events almost exclusively from Tony's perspective, with the occasional deviation to another character's POV. The sequel will be the complete opposite, covering all POVs as these characters move through their lives. It's difficult for me to explain (even more difficult for me to actually execute because I'm trying to keep track of ten interweaving timelines) but I promise it will be presented in an order that makes sense for the story. I'll share more details as we actually get closer to the sequel premiere :)
Chapter 7: Six Feet Apart
A beach vacation did not happen that summer, Steve's request having come too late in the year for Mom and Dad to make and execute plans. He was disappointed, but enjoyed the summer nonetheless. He felt healthier and stronger than he had in a while, and every clinic visit the rest of the year heralded nothing but good news. Second grade was a great year for Steve. Bucky was in the same class as him again, while Alex, Jasper, and Brock had a different teacher. There was the occasional verbal teasing at recess, mostly involving the nicknames Wheezy and Mama Smurf, but nothing escalated like it had that one time. Steve's only major health scare had been another asthma attack, brought on by a stray dog that snuck up on him while he was on a walk with his parents.
Mom and Dad finally acted on their promise of a vacation the following summer, after a blissfully long stretch of Steve being healthier than ever. Packing was an ordeal and a half because all of his treatment and feeding equipment had to come with them. Steve might be taking a vacation, but CF never rested. He squeezed in treatments before morning walks on the beach and after picnics in the sand, but having to do them didn't prevent him from having the time of his life. Together, he and Dad built the best sandcastle Steve had ever seen. It turns out sculpting was way, way harder than drawing, but Steve had just as much fun. They tried valiantly to protect it from the rising tide, pretending they were soldiers defending their fort from the opposing army, but of course the sea won. Then Steve charged into the ocean with Dad hot on his heels, laughing joyfully. He brought home a bunch of seashells and kept them in a little jar on his nightstand, just to have something there that wasn't pills. Every time he looked at it he could remember that beach trip and it made him smile.
He should have known his luck wouldn't last. They returned home just in time for Steve's birthday, and his lung function started to slide. Come mid July, Bucky and his parents packed for their own trip to the beach as Steve and his parents packed for the hospital. Steve's cough plagued him worse than it had in a long time, his lungs felt half full of hardened cement, and his appetite dwindled to near non-existent. Steve didn't look forward to a hospital stay with no hope of a visit from Bucky. He was going to be all the way in North Carolina for two whole weeks, and the week after would go to sleepaway camp in Wisconsin. "Don't do anything stupid until I get back," Bucky had told him.
Steve had reciprocated with, "How can I? You're taking all the stupid with you."
By now, the hospital didn't scare him so much. Sure, most of what happened to him there was no fun at all, but he understood it was only to make him feel better. The nurses all knew him: Peggy, Sharon, Happy, and Heimdall, and so did the other doctors that worked with him. Dr. Pym devised different games to challenge him during physical therapy. Steve beat him in a balloon-blowing race and won a Paw Patrol sticker. He was old enough that he didn't really watch it anymore, but his choices had been that or Spongebob and between the two it was no contest.
Steve and his dad were walking a lap of the ward when he saw an unfamiliar face emerge from the common room. Unlike most of the other kids that had been here at the same time as Steve over the years, this guy wasn't drastically older or younger than him. The boy turned to look at him and said hello."
"Hi," Steve said back. "I'm Steve."
"I'm Brian." Steve's dad and Brian's mom looked at each other and smiled warmly. They took a step forward to pass each other, when suddenly a hand wrapped around Steve's left bicep and yanked him backwards.
"No," the owner of the hand said. Steve looked up; it was Peggy.
"I'm sorry, we didn't know," Brian's mom said sincerely, holding her son to her and taking a step back. Steve noticed her British accent matched Brian's.
"Know what?" Steve asked. The whole situation was terribly confusing.
"Steve, Brian, do you remember the six feet rule of CF?" Peggy asked them. Brian shook his head no. Now that she mentioned it, Steve did remember, though he'd never met another CF patient at Gravesen and therefore hadn't had to practice adhering to it.
"Six feet apart?" Steve said inquiringly.
"That's right. It's very important that you stay at least this far apart from each other," Peggy explained, gesturing to the existing distance between them. "Otherwise you can catch nasty germs form each other, and we don't want that. Okay?"
"Okay."
Steve struggled to hide his disappointment. He finally met a potential friend at Gravesen, and they couldn't even get close enough to really play together. Later that day, he explained this frustration to his dad.
"I'll bet we can find ways for you to play together from a distance," he said.
"Really?" Steve dared to hope that they could be friends after all.
"Sure. I'll ask Brian's mom tomorrow if we can."
"Yay!" He looked forward to getting to know Brian all evening and could barely fall asleep for all his excited energy. After morning treatments, they met Brian and his mom in the common room and sat on opposite ends of the longest couch.
"It's nice to meet you," Brian said politely, since they hadn't gotten to do more than introduce themselves when they met yesterday.
"You too," Steve said. "Is this your first time here?"
Brian nodded, and then he and his mother explained that their family moved to New York from London last year seeking Dr. Erskine's expertise with cystic fibrosis. That explained the accents. Their parents talked a bit about living in the city, and all four of them discussed treatments. Small talk within the chronic illness community was very different than small talk anywhere else. When Steve's parents talked to other grown-ups they just met, CF treatments were never the main topic of conversation. At one point, Steve showed Brian his G-tube button because the other boy didn't have one and was curious what they were like. Once the two families got to know each other, they discussed games that they could play from six feet away.
"Pictionary!" Steve called. He knew you didn't have to be close for that.
"That's a great idea," Dad said. One of the cabinets in the common room had markers and whiteboards in it, Steve knew this because he often used them to draw, and grabbed one set for each of them. He left Brian's on the table so they could collect it without getting too close and sat back down beside Dad.
"I'll go first," Dad announced.
"You get thirty seconds to draw it," Steve reminded him. Those were the rules of Pictionary in their household. He set his marker to the board and started sketching, brow furrowed in concentration. When time was up, he held it up to show to Brian and his mom, then flipped it around so Steve could see.
"What is it?" Brian asked. Steve scrutinized the drawing, and had absolutely no idea what it could be.
"You have to take a guess."
"A robot?" Brian said.
"No."
"A kangaroo?"
"No." After thirty seconds of silence, Dad finally cracked and told them that he'd drawn a monkey. Steve and Brian erupted into giggles. "What's so funny?"
"It's not a very good monkey, Dad," Steve told him.
"What? I think it's a beautiful monkey."
"I don't think so," Brian said. "Now it's my turn." He took thirty seconds to draw on his own whiteboard, then turned it around.
"Oh, I know! It's a bicycle," Steve said.
"Yes. Good guess."
"Okay, now I'll go." Steve took the whiteboard from his dad's hands and thought of something to draw. Once an idea came to him, he started and finished the drawing just in time.
"Wow, that's really good," Brian remarked when Steve flipped the board around.
"Thank you," Steve said.
"I guess we know he didn't get his art skills from me," Dad commented.
"Is it a squirrel?" Brian's mom asked.
"Yeah!"
"How'd you get so good at drawing?" Brian asked.
"I dunno. I guess I just practice a lot."
"You should keep it up, it's clear you have real talent," Brian's mom said.
"Thank you." They played several more rounds together, resulting in some hilariously terrible drawings from Steve's dad and some surprisingly challenging ones from Brian's mom. Brian himself sketched a very accurate set of lungs for a nine-year-old, complete with a bunch of mucus clogging them up. Once they grew bored of that, Steve and Brian turned on MarioKart and played until Steve had to leave for a vest treatment.
"I had so much fun, we should do this again," Steve said eagerly.
"Totally. Who knew it wasn't that hard to play from six feet away?"
For the rest of that visit, Steve and Brian hung out at every possible opportunity. They played video games sitting six feet apart on the couch, watched movies, improved their Pictionary and charades skills, and on one memorable occasion played telephone with all four of their parents with the kids on opposite ends of the line. "Sixty five roses have too many thorns" got twisted into "Sixteen bros don't toot many horns," which for whatever reason tickled them all to the point where even those with healthy lungs grew short of breath.
Only when it came time to go home did Steve really understand the permanence of their restriction. He couldn't hug Brian goodbye. And he really wanted to. The most he could do was wave. His only consolation was that their parents had exchanged contact information, so they could still talk even when they weren't in the hospital together. It made the first week he was home, when Bucky was away at camp, pass much more quickly. The opportunity to talk to someone his own age about CF-related things filled him with indescribable glee. He felt less alone in the world knowing another kid just like him. When Bucky returned, the first thing he did was invite Steve over.
Bucky offered a hug, and Steve hesitated before remembering that the rule only applied to other kids with CF, not Bucky. He enthusiastically accepted. "How was camp?" Steve asked.
"I guess it was fun, but I missed you."
"I missed you too. But I made a new friend at Gravesen!"
"Really? That's great."
"His name is Brian, and he has CF too," Steve explained.
"Oh." Bucky seemed almost disappointed at this news. "I'll bet you guys have a lot in common, then."
"Yeah." Steve didn't know why Bucky suddenly seemed so reserved, but he tried not to let it faze him. "I want to hear all about your week! It had to have been more interesting than mine."
"Well, it was basically camping with slightly better sleeping arrangements. I got stuck on the bottom of a bunk with this guy who climbed down to go to the bathroom three times every night."
"That sucks."
"Yeah. But most of the activities were pretty fun. I discovered I'm pretty good at dodgeball."
"I'm sure you are." Steve convinced Bucky to talk a little more about his time at camp and his family's trip to the beach, and he reciprocated by asking about Gravesen. He told him all about his time with Brian because it was way more interesting than talking about breathing treatments or physical therapy.
"Sounds like you found yourself a new best friend," Bucky said morosely.
"What are you talking about? Who said I had a new best friend?"
"You kinda did with the way you're talking about this Brian kid. It makes sense you guys would get along really well because you have so much in common."
"Just because I happened to meet someone else with CF, he automatically becomes my best friend? That's not true; you're my best friend, Bucky. That's never going to change."
"But I can't relate to you like he can."
"That doesn't matter to me. You don't have to go through the same things I do to be a good friend," Steve assured him. He regretted raving about Brian so much, because it clearly made Bucky question his own worth as a friend. Steve never wanted him to feel that way. Certainly Brian was a good friend, and he could empathize with some things that Bucky couldn't, but that didn't make him a best friend. That title belonged exclusively and forever to Bucky. "I didn't assume Gabe was your new best friend just because you both play soccer, and Brian and I aren't going to be best friends just because we both have CF. Besides, there's a rule with CF that you can't get closer than six feet of each other, so I'll never be able to enjoy Brian's hugs the way I do yours."
Steve opened his arms, hoping he'd convinced Bucky that Brian hadn't replaced him. Fortunately, Bucky's arms soon wrapped around Steve and they hugged like they'd never hugged before.
Though we don't learn anything about him, the character Brian Braddock does exist in the MCU. Peggy name drops him in Endgame when Steve and Tony go back and time and he sees her walk into her office. Just thought you ought to know that fun little tidbit. And yes, people with CF have been doing the whole six feet apart thing since long before coronavirus was a thing.