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There are little things, Tucker eventually notices, that make Wash freeze up for just a second. Make his face twist in a painful grimace for only a moment. Leave his voice just barely unsteady.
Thing Number One Tucker notices when they eat together and he can’t take his eyes off of him because it's still a little surreal having him back. Wash is reading the back of the package and Tucker doesn’t think anything of it until Wash catches himself, shakes his head as if to clear it, and takes a deep breath.
(“Your name is Agent Washington and you have never been allergic to strawberries” Tucker hears him mumble under his breath, like he has to remind himself who he is.)
He notices Thing Number Two when Caboose convinces them both to sign a birthday card for Carolina even though she never actually told any of them when her birthday was. Tucker signs it absently, and Wash starts to do the same before he looks at what he’s written like he’s ashamed of it. Tucker tries to glance at it, and sees the beginnings of a familiar-looking cursive letter L hurriedly changed into a W.
(Church is laughing because Caboose managed to guess Carolina’s birthday correctly by pure chance and she is pissed; Tucker doesn’t see Wash for most of the rest of the day).
Thing Number Three he notices when they start to sleep together (just sleep, in the most innocent sense of the word). Every morning Wash groggily reaches out to the nightstand, feels around, then freezes for a long moment. It looks shockingly familiar, everything about his sleepy body language up until that moment of realization. Then it just looks painful, and Tucker wants to do something to pull him back but he has no idea what’s wrong.
(A few times he actually got sick, and dry-heaved in the bathroom all morning. Tucker pretends not to notice that he was also crying. )
He tries to think about other things off about Wash, things that aren’t just “paranoid ex-special ops guy who clearly has PTSD that he refuses to deal with”. Tries to figure him out, because he’s honestly worried.
It clicks in his brain painfully clear when Caboose calls Wash ‘Church’ again out of habit; he hasn’t done that in a while but he’s tired, and he forgets things, and he was never good with names. Wash answers in unison with Church without thinking, and freezes like a cat.
He did that every time Caboose called him Church, Tucker realizes, like he needs to think about his answer and realize “no, I was wrong, that isn’t my name”.
Church used to grope around for his glasses like Wash does every morning.
Church, not his Church but one with the same personality and god damn that was just confusing, used to be inside of Wash’s head, and Tucker’s stomach turns when he realizes the implications of what he’s pieced together.
The next morning Wash breathes out a shuddering breath and snaps his hand away from the nightstand, like he does every day. Tries to stop the weak trembling in his hands and nausea in his gut because he can’t remember if his name is David or Leonard or Washington or Epsilon and he tastes acrid bile on his tongue and his mind is a fuzzy barrage of mis-matched memories that all end in him getting friends, agents, family, AllisonAllisonAllison killed and he isn’t one person he’s never been one person he used to be one person he is DavidLeonardWashingtonAlphaEpsilonWash and he can’t breath and he’s going to vomit and-
“Wash? You ok?” Tucker knows he isn’t, but he can’t bring himself to let him panic in peace anymore. He has no idea what to do, and winging it hasn’t been working out so great for him lately, but he has to do something.
Wash looks at him, and for the first time Tucker notices the sheer confusion and terror in his eyes. It’s painful to look at, and he slowly reaches out to him.
“Hey man, it’s ok. I’m gonna touch you now, yeah?” Tucker slowly wraps his arm around Wash’s torso and guides him back into the bed. After a long while Wash blinks slowly, letting out a deep breath he didn’t realize he had been holding.
“You ok now?”
Wash shakes his head and tries to laugh, but it just comes out like a painful bark.
“I haven’t been ok in a while. But I’m…I’m functional now. I’m here at least.”
Tucker sighs. “You wanna talk about it? I’m not really into that ‘talk about your feelings’ crap but I feel like this sort of goes beyond that, you know?”
“You mean it isn’t normal to wake up every morning and not have any idea who you are?” he jokes bitterly, shaking his head. “I can deal with it. I appreciate you wanting to help but there’s nothing you could do.”
“No” Tucker answers bluntly.
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean no, as in capital F Fuck that. You looked like a half-starved dog until I started talking to you! You don’t need to deal with this shit on your own now and you don’t seem to get that!”
“Well you know what you don’t seem to get?” Wash retorts angrily. “My head is absolutely full of bullshit that didn’t even happen to me and there’s nothing anybody can do about that, so I have to deal with it! And I have been dealing with it just fine for years!”
“You get like an hour of sleep a night! And I almost never see you eat! I literally don’t get how you haven't just dropped dead. I...shit man, I care about you ok? At least tell me what’s happening. You cant keep pretending we don’t all have some kind of PTSD bullshit going on at this point.”
Wash stays silent, but he lets his posture calm and features soften.
“...I get nightmares too dude. Not like you probably, but I still get them. And you know what I do? I know you do because I fucking talk to you about them. So the least you can do is return the goddamn favor and stop acting like things are alright when they clearly aren’t!”
Wash let out a long, tense sigh and holds himself.
"I forget who I am sometimes" he finally says quietly, like he's embarrassed to admit it.
Tucker offers his arms to him again, and he allows himself to sink into them. He felt tired, in every sense of the word, and he realizes that things never got easier. He got better at hiding it; not even dealing with it, just hiding it from himself and everyone around him and he’s so god damn tired. He buries his face in Tucker’s chest and speaks, voice muffled like that will make this less real. And he tells Tucker everything, because he is terrified and once he starts he can’t stop the flood.
“I forget who I am sometimes. I sign my name as Leonard if I don’t pay attention, and I have to stop myself from answering when people talk to Epsilon, and I’m not allergic to strawberries but I still check labels for it and every time anything like that happens I have to question everything all over again because I forget which memories are mine. And it’s fucking horrifying, alright?”
Tucker runs his fingers through Wash’s hair and holds him closer, because it feels like he’s trying to bury himself away and it’s almost funny because he’s so tall compared to Tucker, but right now he looks like a small child. A small, scarred, worryingly thin, overly weary child who’s got three different lifetimes worth of hurt gnawing away at him.
"I don't feel real" he finally whispers, shaking like a leaf.
Tucker doesn't know what to do. So he holds him until he can breath again, and they get ready for the day that they know they can't avoid.
The next morning, Tucker doesn’t let Wash reach out for Church’s glasses. He holds him tightly until he wakes up all the way and freezes up like he always does, trying to sort out who he is and where he is and twisting his face up in panic. He doesnt know where to go from there, so he just holds him and waits for him to unfreeze.
It gets easier later on, once Tucker gets better at figuring out what Wash needs and gets him to talk about it a little less hysterically.
Eventually he stops reaching for Church’s glasses. He still wakes up confused though. Tucker still takes his head gently between his hands and looks him in the eyes. “Do you know who you are?” he asks slowly.
Wash shakes his head. So far Tucker’s never gotten him to nod yes.
“You’re Agent Washington. You’ve got other things going on in your head but those aren’t yours. Do you remember now?”
He nods his head slowly. This was a good day then. He holds Wash and tells him "I love you" because he's never quite gotten used to that blank stare and he's terrified that one morning Wash won't come back from it. It doesn’t take long for him to come around this morning, and they’re both thankful for that.
The first lucid thing Wash says is “I love you too”.