I got lots of great ideas, so thank you to those who shared! I tried to respond to all of them, but guest reviews won't allow me to do that directly. For the person who mentioned Agents of Shield: I'm currently watching the show for the first time, and I'm only about halfway through season 2. So far, I'm really enjoying it. I'm definitely thinking of ways to bring those characters in, most likely through Gravesen's Chief of Surgery Coulson who was mentioned briefly at the beginning of Gravesen. Other note, the sequel just reached 150k. Wow.

The events detailed in this chapter were mentioned in Bucky's prequel, and several of you mentioned wanting to learn more about what happened. So, here you go :)

Chapter 11: Drug Trials and Tribulations

For the first time ever, Steve was genuinely excited to go to Gravesen. A new drug had just been approved for treatment of CF, and Dr. Erskine wanted Steve to try it. It promised to clear his lungs more effectively than any of the countless medications he'd been on practically his entire life. As soon as the first pill passed his lips, a dramatic sense of anticipation filled him from toe to top.

The drug kicked in even faster than Steve expected it to. By the end of the second day, his lungs felt clearer than they'd felt in years, and he couldn't stop himself from taking deep breaths even when he didn't have to out of pure joy. "This is the best thing that's ever happened to me," he proclaimed to his parents that night. That statement was further supported when he blew a PFT of eighty two percent.

"You're lying," he said in disbelief when they told him the number.

"I'm not lying. Congratulations."

Steve's lungs had been hovering between fifty five and sixty percent function for the past year or so. To hear he'd achieved over eighty percent exceeded any expectations he'd ever had for this new medicine. He and his parents celebrated passionately, even emailing the drug company to thank them for developing a miracle.

Bucky visited on day five of the trial, and Steve had never been happier to see him and tell him all about the magic this drug worked on his system. "It's like nothing I've ever felt before," Steve said dreamily.

"I'm so happy for you," Bucky said sincerely. Steve made to stand up and hug his best friend, but all of a sudden he found his legs felt weak and shaky. He pushed himself halfway to his feet before he fell back onto the bed. Bucky eyed him worriedly, "You okay?"

"I think so," Steve said. He tried again, more carefully this time, and managed to get to standing, albeit shakily. However, when he tried to step forward, he shook like a newborn foal and would have collapsed to the ground if Bucky didn't catch him.

"Whoa. What's going on?"

"I don't know," Steve admitted.

"Do we need to call a doctor?"

They probably should, but Steve wanted to wait a little longer to make sure he didn't raise a false alarm and waste anybody's time. He decided to wait and see if the feeling persisted. "I'll see if it goes away."

"Okay." Bucky sounded hesitant, but he didn't argue. He took a seat beside Steve and fell silent.

"Could you grab my sketchbook?" Steve asked. Bucky handed him the book and a pencil and Steve flipped to a blank page, wanting to draw a pair of lungs to celebrate this feeling. He tried to wrap his right hand around the pencil and found his grip strength to be nonexistent. It fell from his hand and clattered onto the blank page. Steve reached for it again, but his hands wouldn't obey his commands and they trembled as if they were freezing cold.

"Steve," Bucky said gravely.

"I don't know what happening," he croaked. Bucky summoned his parents back, and they took one look at Steve's attempt to stand up and summoned the doctors. A battery of neuromuscular tests found that he'd lost almost all the strength in his legs and hands, but identified no obvious cause. Steve was terrified. He couldn't walk and couldn't pick anything up without an insane amount of exertion and focus.

"Are there known neuro side effects with this new drug?" his mom asked Dr. Erskine.

He shook his head. "None of the trials identified any side effects like these. I've never seen this kind of reaction before." Unable to decipher anything more himself, Erskine brought in a neurologist, Dr. Wong. He took one look at Steve and his list of symptoms and prescribed two days of EEG monitoring. They stuck a bunch of little disks to his head with adhesive and connected wires to them to monitor his brain waves. Steve spent two days looking like an alien, only for them not to find anything of note, and the symptoms were only getting worse. He lost vision in his left eye for half an hour and nobody could tell him why.

Erskine decided to stop the drug. Steve's lungs reverted back to the way they felt before in barely more than a day, but the weakness persisted. Bucky visited again, and Steve admitted to him that he was terrified he'd never walk again. He hadn't even told his parents about that particular concern, trying to put on a brave face when they were clearly massively distraught over his condition. But he could always be honest with Bucky. His best friend sat and wrapped a comforting arm around him while he cried for half an hour. Steve couldn't even properly return a hug; his arms were so weakened.

The best thing that had ever happened to him morphed into the worst experience of his life. Just as the side effects began to abate at an agonizingly slow rate, Erskine suggested they try the drug again at a lower dose to see if they could get the good lung results without the side effects, and Steve enjoyed another week of breathing freely before the weakness and shaking struck again with even more force. "No more," he demanded. "I'm done." Breathing wasn't worth losing every other ability that mattered to him. The humiliation of ambling down the hallway with a walker and his mother hovering like he was a little kid just out of training wheels was worse than fifty percent lung function, probably worse than thirty percent. Steve just wanted out. Between the two trials of the drug, he'd been in the hospital nearly a month.

It took another two weeks after stopping the medication completely for him to even regain enough mobility to go home. He'd missed so much schoolwork, unable to hand write or even type notes for the Ancient One or complete his assignments from his school. "What if this is permanent?" he asked his dad desperately the fiftieth time he tried and failed to pick up a pencil.

"It's not permanent," Dad assured, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"How do you know? Nobody even knows what happened or what's wrong with me!"

"You just have to give it some time."

"How much?"

"I don't know," he admitted. Steve waited. And he waited. He practiced, trying to force his fine motor skills back into function, but nothing seemed to help. It was another two weeks before he could hold a pencil with any sort of confidence that he wouldn't drop it. He stared at his own hand in awe and excitement, noticing the conspicuous lack of any trembling. Snatching up his sketchbook, he tried to draw, but that was taking things too far too fast. His lines were shaky and all over the place, lacking the finesse and control that he'd honed since he was six. Despite this, he continued working, creating a picture unlike any he'd ever done before. The waviness gave it a blurry quality that he actually didn't hate. He stuffed the drawing in his folder as his official first post-drug trial piece.

Upon finally returning to school after a two-month absence, each of his teachers stared at him with a combination of pity and awe. Some of the students did it too, but the middle school was big enough that not everyone knew him well enough to even notice his absence. "Steve, are you okay? That's the longest you've ever been gone," Timmy said when they all sat down at lunch together. They'd all tactfully avoided interrogating him all morning, but now that it was just the five of them apparently they decided to open fire.

"Yeah, I know," Steve sighed. "It was…a lot."

"Did the drug work?" Timmy questioned.

"Yes and no. It did wonders for my lungs, but it gave me crazy dangerous side effects," he explained. "I couldn't walk without assistance for like a month."

"That's insane," Jim remarked.

"I'm so sorry," Gabe said.

"Thanks. I'm okay now. Sometimes I have a little trouble standing up from a chair, but once I'm up I'm good."

"That's good."

"Anything interesting happen while I was gone?" Steve asked.

"Jasper got suspended for a week a while ago."

"Why? What'd he do?"

"Alex wheedled his way out of taking the blame for a fight he started, and Jasper took the fall."

"Who were they fighting?" Steve questioned. He could tell from the group's collective hesitation that he wasn't going to like the answer. Steve sighed, exasperated. "Was it you, Bucky?"

Bucky nodded. "They were talking shit about you and spinning all these stupid, horrible theories about why you weren't at school. I told them to mind their own business, and they came after me."

"Bucky, I've told you a hundred times that you don't have to defend me."

"In my defense, I tried to stop him," Jim insisted.

"Steve, you weren't there. You didn't hear the things they said. You would have done the same thing if you heard them talking about one of us like that."

He knew Bucky was right, but that didn't make him feel any better. The knowledge that his best friend stuck up for him even in his absence sat heavy in his chest. "You didn't get in trouble for fighting, too, did you?"

"No. This time, there were about a dozen eye witnesses corroborate that they started it. I was just defending myself. And your honor, of course."

"Assholes," Gabe muttered. "They got off easy, if you ask me."

"They always do," Timmy sighed.

"I'm surprised they punished him as severely as they did," Bucky commented.

"I mean, it would be nice if they actually nailed Alex for once," Jim said. "But I'll take what I can get. They're much tamer when they're not all three together."

"Does the same apply to you guys when I'm not around?" Steve asked.

"Well, our average respiratory strength obviously goes up a bit," Bucky stated, "But no. If anything, we're wilder without you here to keep us in line."

"Good thing I'm back, then."

"For sure."

~0~

Steve finished out his first year of middle school without any more hiccups in his CF journey. That summer, his family and the Barnes went to the beach together, and Steve encouraged his mom to document that trip with more photos than ever. He wanted to remember it in as much detail as possible. After that, Bucky left for Camp McCoy for three whole weeks and Steve spent his days drawing and spending time with Jim, Timmy, and Gabe when they were available. Seventh grade started out great, but Steve battled colds and sinus infections practically nonstop from December through March. He avoided going inpatient by the narrowest of margins, but he missed out on movie nights, snowball fights, and after school hangouts with his friends. What got him through was commiserating with Brian over video chat. The two of them hadn't met in person since that summer at Gravesen, Brian having moved back to England not long after, but they stayed in touch—and occasionally played digital Pictionary.

"How are you?" Brian asked after they exchanged small talk.

"Well, I've stayed out of the hospital," Steve said. "But it hasn't been easy."

"Tell me about it. I've been on four treatments a day for the past month and a half."

"Really? That sucks. They just gave me permission to go back to two, but I'm still doing nasal rinses for sinuses that refuse to clear."

"Yuck. Hope that clears up."

"Are you finding it easy to keep up with treatment and schoolwork?"

"Easy? Probably not. But it's doable."

"Yeah, I'd say the same. It's just frustrating to have so much less free time to hang out with friends."

"Agreed. My mates went into London last week and Mum wouldn't let me go because she's afraid of germs."

"She should be; germs are scary," Steve said genuinely.

"Yes, but I don't want to make every decision in life based on fear. You've got to make room for some other feelings, right?"

"Yeah, I guess so. But when it comes to CF moms, fear usually rules the roost."

Brian laughed. "I suppose it's even worse for you, since your mum's a nurse."

"Yeah. But it also means she's certified to access my port, so we don't need to go in or hire someone to get it flushed every month."

"That's definitely a perk. I'm still going strong with PICC lines whenever I go in, but how's the port working out for you?"

"It's great. One needle poke and I'm set for the round. Although, it is a little harder to wrap the site for showering than with a PICC."

"I suppose you can't wear the always-stylish sawed-off sock over your arm to keep you from picking at it."

Now it was Steve's turn to laugh. "No. Although I can't say I miss that."

"What else are you supposed to do with socks you outgrow?"

"I think we donate them. But I usually wear holes in socks before I outgrow them, so they just end up getting tossed."

"Poor socks." Brian turned to look at something off screen. "I'm afraid I'm being summoned. See you later."

"Bye," Steve called. After he hung up, he sighed with a sense of catharsis that only came from conversations with Brian. He was the only person Steve had ever met who truly understood the hardships of CF life.

~0~

"It's always so cold in here," Steve complained. The school's cafeteria had notoriously bad heating and he'd neglected to wear a sweatshirt to school under his winter jacket. Even wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, he had goosebumps.

"Here." Jim handed Steve his sweatshirt which he'd cast aside earlier. The kid was practically immune to the cold, wearing shorts well into winter without any discomfort.

"Thanks." Steve pulled the garment over his head and threaded his arms through, grateful for the extra layer. No longer distracted by the temperature, he returned to eating his lunch and the group discussion of their math teacher's latest attempt to reteach a concept they'd all failed to understand on their last test.

"I seriously don't understand why he can't just skip it," Timmy said.

"They can't skip anything because all of next year's curriculum builds off of what we learn this year," Gabe explained. "The high school teachers will come after him if he fails to lay the framework properly."

"I feel bad. He's tried three…different methods…and none of them…work any better." Steve's guts twisted painfully with the realization of what was about to happen. He unfortunately recognized this feeling, however couldn't discern a reason for it to be happening to him now. There were no animals in sight; Steve knew better by now. His hands reflexively moved to his chest in a futile attempt to stop it from tightening up. Glancing down, he identified his fatal mistake. Jim had a dog, and the sweatshirt Steve had just borrowed had hairs stuck to it inside and out. He must have breathed some of it in when he put it on.

"Steve…" All four of his friends stopped what they were doing and stared at him. Only Bucky had the sense to do something about it. He helped Steve to stand and raced him to the nurse's office where his school inhaler was kept at all times. By the time they got there, Steve was breathing through half a straw and his vision was tunneling. The nurse took one look at him and snatched his rescue inhaler from the correct drawer. Steve knew the drill, and he waited for the relief which was supposed to come with the medication.

It never came.

He took a second puff, and by the time he was certain that one also failed to help he was too dizzy to hold the inhaler up to his face. Bucky stood in front of him, attempting to coach him into drawing more effective breaths, but Steve, despite all his training in how to breathe, physically could not work air into or out of his stupid lungs. The nurse was on the phone, eyes flitting frantically between Steve gasping for air and her desk. When Steve started to slump forward, Bucky caught him and forced him to sit upright. He knew it was the best position from which to get air, but he was so exhausted that he couldn't hold it on his own. The room around him swam in and out of focus, but he zeroed his gaze in on Bucky's panicked face. As he felt himself fade, he thought about Bucky's reaction the last time he witnessed one of Steve's asthma attacks. He didn't want to be the cause of his best friend's nightmares again. An apology formulated in his head, but he didn't have nearly enough air to speak it into existence. Bucky's face was the last thing he saw before he blacked out.

Due to cliffhanger and approaching holiday, there will be a bonus chapter this week as my gift to you :)