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Steve wakes because he can’t breathe. There’s a burn in his chest—familiar, something that’s started recently, and also, something from before—and this burn fills him so thoroughly, there’s no room for his lungs to move, to take in air. He needs air. It hurts and he’s panicking, despite himself.
—-
Steve checks his watch, does the math in his head, checks it again.
A gust of morning air—smells so fresh, his favorite part of his jogs—brushes through his hair and cools the sweat on the back of his neck. He’s been running for the past hour. A little over an hour, if there’s really nothing wrong with his watch. Took him longer today than yesterday…
He shakes his head; he’s off his game, if that’s really his time.
He doesn’t think much about it.
—-
He’s clutching the bedsheets, eyes screwed shut as he wills the fire in his throat to die down, to let him breathe.
Then there’s voices, someone moving his way and a shock of shame runs down Steve’s spine. He doesn’t recognize the voice, or the face once he’s opened his eyes, but they’re telling him to open his mouth for them. He does so, because the woman is obviously a nurse, and pants helplessly until something round and plastic is put between his lips, and he's told to hold it there.
"Breathe out." He does, the woman presses something at the end of the de—an inhaler. The device is an inhaler. "Now breathe in, slow, deep, that’s it. Hold that for me for a few seconds."
—-
His shield is up just a second before the blast knocks him off his feet. Steve lands on what’s left of a Honda Civic, side knocking on the edge of the shattered window frame in a way that smarts, that knocks the wind right out of him, but at least drops him to his feet.
Hours later, Steve’s side is still purple, and its a chore not to limp. Its two days before it starts to clear up.
—-
"Where’s—Where’s Stark?" he gasps, once the spacer’s removed.
The nurse shoots a look to the end of the room and someone—another nurse? One of Tony’s assistants? Fuck, someone else saw him—darts out into the hall, hand to their ear. “We’ll get him right away,” says the nurse.
Steve’s breaths are coming easier, and that lets him think, which lets him find new things worth panicking over. “He w’s ‘spos—” Gasp in. “‘sposed to fix this…” Gasp in.
—-
Things slowly start adding up and Steve realizes he’s honestly afraid of letting anyone else know. It doesn’t seem like they’ve noticed—he’s still pulling his weight in fights, still making good calls, and he’s pretty sure Sam thinks he’s started running his pace for the company, not because…
No because something is wrong.
But if anyone’s noticed, it’d be Natasha. Steve wonders if he should tell her, rather than fail at keeping a secret from the Black Widow.
But its not a big deal yet, right? He’s pulling his weight, making good calls…
—-
Steve brushes the sweat from his brow as he waits, as the steroids loosen his airways, as the burn gives way to an ache.
When he pulls his hand away, God, it doesn’t matter. He's lost his breath again. His chest is stiff in a whole new way. Terror.
His hand drops and lays, shaking, narrow and bony, in his lap.
—-
There’s scabs from two weeks ago on Steve’s knuckles and he’s staring at them. Staring at them while he tries to catch his breath.
It’s just breathing, why is it so hard?
Opening his uniform doesn’t help, its not the uniform’s fault his chest is too damn tight. Yes, his uniform doesn’t fit like it used to, but it’s not gotten more constricting. If anything, it’s gone loose.
Steve doesn’t hear him come over, but Bucky’s shadow falls over him and he’s offered a hand up, which he takes. He smiles, despite the panting, or tries to, because Buck’s giving him a strange look. Confusion, Steve thinks, before that look gives way to something like surprised, maybe even frightened recognition.
"Yer asthma," Bucky says, and the blood drains from Steve’s face.
—-
Steve waits for Stark and shakes. Shakes like he used to, like he remembers, because this tiny body doesn’t know what to do with all the adrenaline his panic has been pouring into his system.
This is a nightmare. One he’s had frequently since 1943. Where he wakes up and its all just…gone. Everything he’d become, everything they’d made him into. Gone.
—-
Steve agrees to a check-up
He learns that he’s shrunk an inch and a half and lost twelve pounds, almost all of that muscle mass.
They do several tests and come back to him with bad news. Bad meaning horrific. They think the serum’s run its course, burned through Steve’s enhanced metabolism like anything else. Now its effects are fading. Inflammation has already started returning to his lungs, and it'll only get worse from there. Unless they do something, something, Steve’s in for the lengthy, painful process of his body just…wasting away.
—-
He doesn’t get Stark first—that bastard, that lying bastard—he gets Bucky. The tight jawed anger bleeds from Steve the instant he sees him, because Bucky looks just as scared as he feels.
Steve drops his eyes as Bucky comes over. Nothing happens, Bucky looks at Steve while Steve looks at his own tiny, useless, shaking hands, and nothing happens.
—-
Tony says he has the solution to all Steve’s problems.
Extremis hasn’t been perfected, but Stark bets that there’s still enough Super left in Steve to help him accept the treatment without a fuss. And even if his body does fuss, he’s not so Super that he can’t be knocked out for the process.
Theoretically, it could stop his body’s degradation where it is, leaving Steve with some mild, exercise-induced asthma, but more than enough muscle mass to keep him tossing his shield around
Steve’s put under the next day, administered Extremis, and his friends watch as he glows and shrinks, his body regenerating in a different way than anticipated. His cells remember how he’s supposed to be, so that’s what he becomes. Steve is saved a world of pain in the process; years, maybe, of his bones shrinking, turning brittle under deflating muscle. The serum burns out of his system, not leaving so much as a trace. There’s no going back.
Tony, of course, blames himself.
---
Steve's still shaking for, God, so many reasons, when Bucky finally sits on the edge of the bed. Steve tilts into him immediately and he didn't realize he was so cold until Bucky's put his arm around his shoulders and pressed Steve against his side, where he's not.
Neither says anything. Steve listens as Bucky's heartbeat starts to drown out the sound of his own, until the panic and fear has left him and he's boneless and exhausted in its wake. Bucky doesn't move. Steve's taken ahold of the hem of his shirt, because he doesn't want him to. Neither says anything, because neither knows how to admit how much they'd missed having an excuse to be this close.