Chapter 19: Cap-tain

Bucky put his soccer bag down on the porch to open the front door with the keys on his lanyard. Lamberg had gone overtime at practice, and he was exhausted. With the World Cup coming up in about three months, they were all working harder than ever before. He opened the door, and lugged his bag inside. The smell of roasting vegetables already drifted around the house. Upon entering the kitchen, Bucky found Steve at the stove. He looked up when Bucky walked in, and Bucky could immediately tell that his smile was forced.

"Hey," Steve greeted.

Bucky decided not to immediately hound him over it, and announced he'd take a quick shower and be back in time to set the table. A glance at the timer on the vegetables in the oven proved he would have enough time if he hurried. Even moving quickly, he had enough time to think. And worry. Steve hadn't been himself for the past two weeks or so, quieter than usual, never initiating physical contact, and stiffening whenever Bucky did so. Bucky had asked what was wrong on multiple occasions, but Steve refused to tell him anything, so he stopped pressuring him. He would bring it up when he was ready. That was how these things always went. There had been no health scares since the acute rejection episode last year, and Bucky hoped whatever was wrong could be fixed with relative ease.

Stepping out of the shower, he quickly dried off and got dressed before heading back to the kitchen. The timer on the oven had just gone off, and Steve pulled the roasted veggies out to cool before returning to the stove. Bucky set the table and then stepped up behind Steve. He moved to hug him from behind since he hadn't seen him all day, pausing when he felt Steve stiffen. "What's the matter?" Bucky asked.

Steve said nothing, but he grabbed Bucky's arm and wrapped it around his waist, allowing the hug after all. Bucky immediately felt what was wrong, and his stomach clenched in sympathy. He knew CF could cause digestive issues like this, but he'd never felt bloat this severe before. "What do you need to do?" he asked.

Steve sighed. "I thought it might resolve, but it's only been getting worse. I threw up this morning. I'm going to clinic for x-rays tomorrow and hopefully they'll tell me what to do this time."

"It's happened before?"

"Yeah. It was worse when I was a little kid. Probably happened a few times a year until middle school."

"How come I never knew about it?"

Steve chuckled painfully. "I never told you. It was fucking embarrassing."

"That's something we have in common," Bucky said with a wry grin.

"What?"

"There are some chemo side effects that nobody except my nurses and the other cancer kids know about."

"Wait, really?"

"Yes. I'll say this much and this much only: never trust a fart on chemo."

Steve's eyebrows shot to his hairline.

"No further questions." Bucky changed the subject entirely, unwilling to discuss it further. "So you already know what the treatment options are?" he asked, gesturing to Steve's abdomen.

Steve nodded. Bucky could tell from his demeanor that none of them were pleasant. Hopefully, they'd be able to fix this in the least invasive way possible.

~0~

"We're going to try cleanout at home first to see if it works. If it doesn't, we'll try something else," Steve explained. The x-rays had only confirmed what he already knew: intestinal blockage due to poor digestion and mucus buildup. His enzyme pills were supposed to prevent this, but they weren't foolproof.

"Okay. I'm already at the store," Bucky replied. After Steve told him last night, he'd called Sarah and asked how these things usually went. She'd explained the process and given him a general shopping list.

"Really?"

"Yeah. What do you want?"

Steve sighed. Clearly, he didn't want to do this, and Bucky didn't blame him, but it was better than the alternatives. "Clear liquids only and twenty caps in twenty-four hours."

"Twenty?" Sarah had said sixteen was usual protocol. Even that sounded like more than Bucky could ever drink, but she insisted Steve had managed it even at age four. Actually, it made sense that he'd need more now that he was older and bigger than when he was a kid.

"Twenty," Steve confirmed. "Minimum."

"Yikes. Shall I also get toilet paper?"

"Shut up."

Bucky took that as a yes. "I'll be home in half an hour."

"Okay."

"Don't start until I get back."

"Why?"

"Just don't, okay?" A plan was beginning to form in the back of his mind, and Bucky wanted to wait to share it in person.

"Fine. See you soon."

Man, he was already grumpy and he hadn't even started yet. Bucky already looked forward to this being done and behind them.

~0~

He'd long ago learned how to shop with maximum efficiency even with one arm, and it only took him twenty-five minutes to get everything he needed and get home. Steve offered to help him carry bags inside, but Bucky refused. "I have a surprise, and I don't want you to see it yet," he explained.

"Okay." Steve watched suspiciously as Bucky carried in far more than one person could drink in a day, even on a cleanout regimen. He'd bought at least three different flavors of Gatorade, two of gelatin, and multiple boxes of popsicles. Steve picked one up and immediately rolled his eyes. Bucky resisted the urge to bust out laughing. They were those red, white, and blue "Firecracker" popsicles.

"Are you serious?"

"They're patriotic," Bucky said with a grin.

"Why did you get so much?"

"Let me explain."

Bucky fished out the last and most important item: a pack of fifty solo cups in two colors. He cleared the kitchen table and started lining them up in two neat rows of twenty, blue for Steve and red for himself. The different colors were to ensure they didn't get mixed up. That would have disastrous consequences for Bucky.

"What are you doing?" Steve asked.

"What you are," he replied. "Well, to the best of my ability."

"What does that mean?"

"I'm going to match you. Liquids only. Cup for cup. Just, without any drugs in mine."

"Bucky, I can't ask you to do that. I've done this before—it's miserable."

"You're not asking me. I'm doing it anyway. I don't want you to be miserable all alone."

Steve looked like he wanted to argue further, but ultimately decided against it. He resigned himself to tag-teaming this venture and started measuring out caps of Miralax, placing one capful beside each of his cups. Laying it all out on the table at once made it look like a lot. Bucky thought they were finished, but Steve dug around in a kitchen drawer and found two straws, which he placed beside the first cups.

"It's more fun with a straw," he claimed when Bucky gave him a funny look. "And by the back half my blood sugar gets low enough that sometimes my hands are shaky and I'd probably spill drinking it from the cup."

"Okay," Bucky acquiesced.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Steve asked again.

Bucky laid a hand on his shoulder and looked him dead in the eyes. "Steve. I will never know what it feels like to be you. I can just do my best to be here for you. Let me perform this loving act of solidarity."

"Fine."

"Before we begin, I want evidence of this." He quickly snapped a photo of their setup on the table. "One day, we'll look at this picture and laugh."

"Yeah, that one day isn't going to come for a long time."

"Whatever. What do you want to start with?"

Steve looked at the various bottles lined up on the counter and selected blue Gatorade. He poured eight ounces into each of their cups, then dumped the powder into his own. Bucky waited while Steve stirred for the medicine to dissolve, then held out his cup. "Cheers to doing this together."

"To doing this together," Steve agreed. They downed their first cup without pausing for air. "One down, nineteen to go."

~0~

Cups two and three went down easily. At such an early stage, the amount of intake was nowhere near excessive. Bucky didn't start to suffer until cup number five. It was three o'clock and he hadn't eaten lunch since Steve's clear-liquids-only diet started with the first capful at noon. He didn't say a word about it, knowing Steve was suffering the same, only worse.

They drank cup number six in red Gatorade and cracked open the box of Firecracker popsicles. Bucky made a point of making lewd facial expressions at Steve the entire time he sucked on his. By the time his own popsicle was down to just the wooden stick, he was afraid Steve might choke on his from how hard he was laughing. Steve pulled the stick out of his mouth and asked, "You picked these out just so you could make a filthy joke, didn't you?"

Bucky spit his popsicle stick across the room with the force of his laughter.

They raced each other for cup number seven, which was definitely a bad idea. So, for cups eight and nine, they took it slow, sipping from their straws occasionally while watching a movie. Bucky paused it every time Steve got up to go to the bathroom, even when the other man insisted he didn't have to wait. When Bucky got up to pee, Steve did the opposite: he fast forwarded to almost the end of the movie.

"I know I wasn't gone that long," Bucky said. "You can't fool me."

Steve took another sip of his Gatorade. "It was worth a shot."

Luckily, it was a movie they'd both seen before, so skipping so far ahead didn't spoil anything.

They made green gelatin for dinner, and finished it off with another cup.

"Ten caps in under ten hours," Bucky remarked almost drunkenly. None of their beverages were alcoholic, but between the ridiculousness of the escapade and what was probably a slight sugar high, he felt giddy. "They should call you the Captain."

"Very funny," Steve drawled. "Cap is such an arbitrary measurement. I wish they made Miralax bottles with really tiny caps, then twenty wouldn't be so much."

"Talk to Nick."

"I don't think SHIELD manufactures laxatives."

"Whatever."

"Let's do eleven right now and then take a break," Steve suggested.

"Okay."

"And can I have another one of those patriotic popsicle things?"

"You don't have to ask permission."

"No. I'm asking you to get it for me."

"Aye aye, Captain," Bucky said, saluting him. Steve only rolled his eyes.

They went to sleep at around eleven, after finishing off cup number twelve. Bucky got up at least three times that night, Steve twice as many. Each time he returned to bed he looked more exhausted. At six A.M. they both got up at the exact same time and almost knocked into each other on their way to the bathroom. They decided more sleep was probably out of the question for both of them at this rate and migrated back to the kitchen after that.

"Do you want number thirteen in coffee?" Bucky asked. As long as they didn't add any milk or cream, coffee counted as a clear liquid.

"Do we have any apple juice?" Steve asked.

"No." That was one thing neither Sarah nor Steve had mentioned at the time as something to add to the list.

"I think I'd rather do orange Gatorade," he said.

"Coming right up." Bucky knew exactly how to pour eight ounces at this point.

"You don't have to match me down to the type of drink," Steve insisted.

"I'm indecisive. This makes it easier."

"Alright."

They drank their orange Gatorade together at the table, then moved to the sofa. Bucky turned the TV onto some random news channel, but both of them were too tired to really pay attention.

"I don't know which is worse, clearing out my lungs or clearing out my guts," Steve bemoaned after returning from the bathroom once again. He collapsed on the couch and threw an arm over his eyes. Bucky guessed he was probably suffering from a headache and closed the blinds. Steve didn't even notice him get up and move around the room to do so.

"I can't help you answer that, sorry," Bucky said. His only complaints from this adventure were the number of times he'd had to pee and the gnawing hunger. He looked at the clock, which read seven thirty in the morning. They had seven more cups to down before noon if they wanted to meet Steve's doctor's goal of twenty caps in twenty-four hours. Bucky ventured into the kitchen, now littered with empty solo cups, half-full bottles of Gatorade he'd neglected to put back in the fridge, and a few popsicle sticks. "What do you want the next one in?" he asked Steve. All he got in answer was a drawn-out groan. Bucky shrugged and sprung for plain water. He glanced at Steve's lethargic form sprawled across the couch and decided they were definitely in the spill risk phase of this. He stuck the straw in Steve's cup and returned to the living room.

"Number fourteen," he announced, handing the cup to Steve. He took it wordlessly and brought the straw to his lips, managing only two or three sips before casting it aside.

"What would our friends say if they knew what we were doing today?" he asked blearily, without opening his eyes.

"We hope you feel better, Steve," Bucky said in a voice he thought represented their friends. "And Bucky, how kind of you to go so far out of your way to commiserate with your husband."

That at least earned him an amused huff. Steve managed to finish half the cup, then another quarter in the next ten minutes. Bucky was surprised and impressed that he hadn't really started flagging earlier.

"If they found out about this, we'd never live it down. They already think we're hopelessly sappy, and this would make it a thousand times worse," Steve said. "We can't ever tell them."

"Okay," Bucky said casually.

Steve sat up. He sipped again from his straw until he got the dry, sucking air noise, then tipped it back to down the last bit of water at the bottom of the cup. "Take this to your grave," he said sternly.

Bucky drank down the last drops of his own water and set down his cup on the coffee table. "I will. That's a promise."

Steve nodded curtly and promptly collapsed back onto the couch. He managed maybe twenty minutes of sleep before he heaved himself up and back to the bathroom. When he got back, he returned to the exact same position. "Bucky, you have to be starving," he said. "I won't be disappointed if you go ahead and eat."

"I'm not going to do that. We're in this together, remember?"

"Yeah. It just seems unfair. You're not getting any benefit out of this like I supposedly am."

"Supposedly? Do you feel it working or not?"

"Bucky," Steve said knowingly. "How many times have you seen me go to the bathroom? It's fucking working."

"Okay, just checking. It would suck to have done all this for it not to work."

"For sure."

"Has that ever happened?"

"No." Steve paused. "Well, there was this one time when I was a toddler that it was so bad they didn't even bother trying this way first, but I don't remember it. And my parents don't really like to talk about it. But luckily, we've caught it earlier every time since then, and this way has worked."

"Hopefully the streak will continue."

"Yep."

Bucky mixed cap number fifteen in blue Gatorade in the and brought it to Steve. Sure enough, the straw was necessary, because Steve's hands were visibly shaky. He took a few sips and set the cup aside. "It's times like these I miss my G-tube," he sighed.

"Yeah?"

"I didn't have to drink all this shit for cleanouts. It just got pumped straight into my stomach."

"Sounds convenient."

"Yeah."

"Is there anything else you miss? From before transplant?"

Steve hesitated before answering. "Just the absence of this crushing weight of knowing I'm only alive because somebody else died. And I'll never even know who they are."

Bucky didn't know how to respond to that. The only donations he'd ever received were blood products, and those donors didn't have to die. Steve had attempted to reach out to his donor's family, but they'd declined. He had to content himself with knowing the person at least chose to be an organ donor, or their lungs never would have ended up in his chest.

Sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen were the hardest. They weren't close enough to the end to really sprint for the finish, but they were exhausted and sick of drinking. Steve especially. He didn't complain, though. Not once during the entire process did he complain. His mom called to ask how things were going as Bucky was pouring out cup number nineteen. Bucky smiled just listening to Steve's half of the conversation.

"No worse than any other cleanout."

"Of course. He's actually matching me cup for cup. Without the laxatives, of course."

"Yeah. It's actually really encouraging. We only have two more to go."

"Tomorrow morning. I think they're going to be clear. I feel better."

"Bye, Mom. Love you."

"Here's your penultimate cup," Bucky announced as he handed it over.

"Can we do these two back-to-back just to get it over with?"

"Sure."

From the look on his face, it looked like Steve was chugging lemon juice instead of red Gatorade, but Bucky doubted he looked much different. Too much of anything could definitely taint its flavor. After finishing off cup number twenty, they both tossed their empty solo cups in victory.

~0~

Steve didn't call Bucky with his x-ray results the next morning. He delivered the news in person by bursting through the front door and exclaiming, "Get the enzymes! I'm cleared for solid food!"

Bucky grabbed the bottle out of the well-stocked medicine cabinet and tossed it to Steve as he practically barreled into the kitchen. He caught it with one hand and tore open the fridge with the other. "I'm guessing this means it worked?"

"You bet." Steve grabbed an apple and tossed it to Bucky. "Wash this." He rattled out a snack-sized dose of enzymes and swallowed them dry.

"Please?"

"Please."

Steve grabbed the peanut butter jar and a knife. Bucky tossed him the washed and dried apple. "Don't cut yourself in your haste," Bucky chuckled.

"Fine." Steve used the knife, not to cut the apple, but to reach into the jar and slap a blob of peanut butter directly onto the side of the apple. He took a bite and got peanut butter all over his upper lip. Bucky quickly remedied that.

Curious about that one time this happened when Steve was a toddler? The one that was so bad his parents don't like to talk about it? I've got not one, but TWO Gravesen Guardians chapters about it. Fair warning, they're not pretty, but as you've seen in this chapter, CF sometimes isn't. I'm not going to post them immediately to keep the flow of this story uninterrupted, but be on the lookout for them.