Work Text:
1.
The really unfair thing is that Tucker does tell Wash.
Okay, fine, not right away. Tucker might have been a little bit busy crawling over dead bodies to get out of a crashed spaceship. And dragging Caboose's concussed ass with him. And convincing Wash that he wasn't back on the Mother of Invention. And convincing Sarge that the crash wasn't a plot orchestrated by the dirty backstabbing Blues—though to be fair, Wash did most of that. He'd recovered enough to use his crazy Freelancer voice, and Sarge only grumbled a little before he went back to jabbing Grif with his shotgun while demanding that he wake up so he could properly appreciate being shot, dammit.
Then there was the whole mess of digging Simmons out of the wreckage. And sorting out their camps. And realizing that Carolina and Church hadn't come back from patrol. And Caboose realizing that Church hadn't come back.
Yeah, pretty much everything about the first week sucked.
The point is—three days into Oh God The Ship Crashed We're All Going To Die, Tucker totally goes to Wash and says, "Hey, Wash, do you still have that healing unit thing?"
Wash freezes in the middle of inspecting the pile of junk that's supposed to become a radio tower. "Why?"
"Well, my ribs kinda feel like that time in Vegas—"
And Wash doesn't even ask him what happened in Vegas, he just appears at Tucker's side and starts stripping off his armor.
"Uh, dude, that's kinda FUCK THAT HURTS."
Wash pulls his hand away from poking Tucker's side and says accusingly, "You have broken ribs. How did you break your ribs?"
"Uh . . . you do remember the ship crashing, right?"
"You've had broken ribs for three days—" Wash's screech is hitting soprano territory "—and YOU DIDN'T TELL ME?"
"It didn't hurt that bad," Tucker mutters.
"You could have gotten a punctured lung! A lacerated spleen! Flail chest!"
"Seriously, 'flail chest'? That's not even a thing."
But apparently it is a thing, and Wash spends like five minutes lecturing Tucker about it after he snaps the healing unit into Tucker's armor. And the healing unit is nice, there's this awesome numbness spreading through his chest, but Tucker is about ready to scream.
Because it's not like he's that injured. It's not like his entire rib cage has been crushed by falling bulkheads or his brains have been smeared across the floor. He saw that stuff when the ship crashed, okay, he's trying to forget the people who were shuddering and screaming even after—
And Wash is still ranting, in the prissiest voice Tucker has ever heard, about "mission protocol" and "safety procedures," and seriously, who does Wash think he is? Who does he think they are?
They're not Freelancers, okay. They're not even soldiers. They're just a team of fuck-ups, Tucker's the fuck-up who managed to crash the ship, and Wash expects him to fill out some kind of itemized receipt for every stubbed toe?
"Are you listening, Private Tucker?" Wash demands shrilly. "All injuries must be reported to your commanding officer immediately."
Fuck you, Agent Washington.
"Yeah," says Tucker. "I hear you."
2.
Tucker switches on his helmet radio. "Hey, Wash?"
"Get off the radio, Private Tucker," Wash drones.
Damn, he should have started out sounding more injured. Never mind; Tucker has got this.
"I, uh . . ." He lets his voice get a little breathy, helpless. "I'm just, I was trying to set up base, and I kinda slipped and . . . I'm bleeding."
"Don't panic," Wash says quickly. "I'll be there in a minute."
"So much blood," Tucker moans, and wonders if he's overplaying it.
He totally isn't. Wash shows up 30 seconds later, all highly disciplined Freelancer panic and 100% convinced that there's an emergency going on.
"Let me see," he says, and he sounds so desperate that Tucker actually feels . . . like the asshole totally deserves it.
Tucker holds up his right hand. The glove is off, so Wash can see the enormous drop of blood dripping off his pinky.
Wash stares at him.
"You called me in here—" Aww, yeah, there's the screech that Tucker knows and hates "—to look at a PAPERCUT?"
"All injuries must be reported to a commanding officer immediately," Tucker says, seriously.
Wash heaves a sigh, then turns around and stomps out of the base.
"Come on!" Tucker calls after him. "Aren't you worried I'll develop flail fingers?"
3.
"Hey, Wash? Do you have a sec?"
Wash stops.
He clearly doesn't want to. He knows that this is bullshit, Tucker can see it in the slump of his shoulders, the way his head rolls back slightly. But he still can't help himself.
"Yes, Private Tucker?" he asks wearily.
This will never stop being awesome.
"I have this rash," says Tucker.
It's not actually complete bullshit: Tucker does have a rash on his back, and it is kinda hard for him to reach. It's nice to have some help.
"How did you get a contact allergy rash on your back?" Wash asks wearily as he smears the antihistamine ointment between Tucker's shoulder-blades.
"Look, it's not my fault if I sleepwalk sometimes—"
"YOU WOULDN'T HAVE THIS PROBLEM IF YOU STOPPED SLEEPING NAKED."
4.
Tucker doesn't care if Agent Assface is having nightmares. Like, seriously, not even a bit.
His old team is dead? He's worried we're next? Boo-hoo. Should have thought about that before putting the idiot and the murderbot in charge of Blue Team. Not to mention doing his best to kill Tucker with squats.
So he doesn't care, but he still wakes up when he hears that distinctive sound of whimpering + thumping = Freelancer PTSD.
It's not a sound he's heard in a while, but it's not one he can really forget. The first couple weeks after Sidewinder were basically one huge PTSD party, with Tucker flashing back to the desert, and Caboose unable to track who was and wasn't Church, and certain ex-Freelancers remembering they shot Donut and trying to climb out the window in the middle of the night.
Tucker doesn't care anymore, not like he did back when he was trying to give Wash a chance, but. Well. It's really fucking annoying, listening to Wash thrash around as he dreams about Epsilon.
That's the only reason Tucker crawls out of bed, resentfully pulls on some boxers, and stumbles over to Wash's side of the base. He's finally woken up, but is staring at the wall and panting in the harsh, desperate way that means he's probably about to have another panic attack.
Which means it's time for desperate measures.
Wash has this thing. Okay, Wash has a lot of Things, because Wash scores 12 out of 10 on the Freelancer Fucked With My Head scale, but this thing is (probably) pure Wash.
He's not a touchy person. He will crawl out of his skin to avoid almost any sort of physical contact. Even fistbumps make him uneasy. But put a hand on the back of his neck, and he'll just . . . relax. It's like scruffing a cat, and it's weird enough that usually Tucker doesn't take advantage of it.
Now, though, Tucker hooks his hand around the back of Wash's neck and says, "Hey. Wash."
The only answer he gets is a full-body shudder.
"Seriously, dude, wake up."
". . . Tucker?"
Fuck it, Agent Washington is not supposed to sound that sad and lost.
"Yeah," says Tucker. "I need your help. I've got this rash in my left armpit."
For one second, Wash stares at him, and Tucker seriously thinks he's going to go for it.
Then Wash groans and shoves him away. "Go back to sleep, Private Tucker."
5.
When Tucker wakes up after Felix and the radio tower, his first thought is, Wooooooo that ceiling is white.
It's followed pretty quickly by, Wow, I'm not dead after all, and, Hey, I guess we won?
He tries to say that last one out loud, but all that comes out is "Mnnggghngghh," because there's a fucking tube stuck down his throat. Ow.
"And look at you, waking up just on time," Grey trills, looming over him. "Breathing easily? Too bad, I guess the cyborg throat enhancements will just have to wait for someone else."
Tucker wants to say something like fuck off, you're insane, or maybe even Wash, help!—but all he manages is a sort of "mmph" as Grey pulls the tube out of his throat.
"And how are you feeling? Don't hold back, I had to make some interesting stitches in you."
"Wash, help," he rasps, and then realizes that OH FUCK he said that out loud.
"Yeah, he's still asleep," says Church, appearing overhead. "Because he got pounded within an inch of his life by a maniac. Y'know. As you do."
"Hey, I got stabbed," says Tucker, only slurring a little. "Way more heroic."
But then he notices the way that Church is—shaking, he's glitching, static running up and down his sides and turning his sniper rifle into a zigzag.
"'M sure he's fine, Church," he mutters.
"Yeah, whatever."
"Agent Washington is receiving excellent care!" Grey carols from outside the room. "Actually, I think he's coming this way!"
"Oh, shit," says Church, and promptly vanishes.
"Captain Tucker," Wash intones, like this is just another training exercise in the canyon. Like his face isn't a puffy mass of bruises, and Tucker isn't laid out flat in a hospital bed. "Explain yourself."
"Yeah, I'm gonna have an awesome scar," says Tucker. "Check it out. Chicks will dig it."
"Only if they don't have to talk to you," Church mutters, appearing briefly and then winking out again.
"Epsilon," Wash growls.
"Hey, relax," says Tucker, and if anyone ever asks, this giddy feeling is from the painkillers and not the sheer relief of we're all okay, wow. "It worked, right?"
6.
There's nothing wrong with Tucker.
Seriously, nothing. Simmons has two bullets in his leg, Caboose might lose an eye, but Tucker? Grey looked him over and said his only problem was a strained wrist. There's probably a joke he could make about that, but Tucker . . . Ever since the Staff of Charon, somehow he doesn't have the energy for that.
Or much of anything, really.
Church didn't die in his head. He disassembled himself into fragments like the fucking asshole he is, but he didn't die. He didn't rip himself into bloody, despairing pieces and shred Tucker's brain along with it. He peaced out so quietly and carefully that Tucker didn't feel a thing.
Tucker doesn't even remember it happening. He remembers saying, "See you on the other side, Church," and a little huff of laughter from Church that he felt more than heard (because for the first time, Church was riding in his implants instead of his suit). He remembers lunging forward as the door opened, and bang bang swish stab holy fuck that's more adrenaline than I've ever felt in my life. And he remembers when a crowd of baby AIs started yammering at him all at once.
But he doesn't remember Church leaving.
When Tucker was twelve, he managed to sprain his ankle falling off the very bottom stair at school. He wasn't looking, he thought he was already off the stairs, and he took a big step forward. He still remembers that sickening half-second when he thought his foot was going to touch the ground and there was only empty air.
It's like that now. He keeps expecting to feel Church in the back of his skull, and there's just that nothing instead. Tucker's been sitting here on the couch in the rec room for an hour, head in his hands and breathing very slowly, but the sick, falling sensation at the pit of his stomach won't go away.
When he hears the door open, he doesn't bother looking up.
"Well, Caboose is out of surgery," says Wash. "Doctor Grey said it went well. She was pretty disappointed she didn't get to give him a robot eye."
"Great," Tucker mutters. He should probably feel happy about that, but all he feels is falling, falling, falling.
There's a brief silence, and fuck, he can totally smell that special miasma of Agent Washington Thinks There Is A Problem.
"Anything to report, Captain Tucker?"
"I'm fine," Tucker says. Because he's an asshole, okay, but he's not enough of an asshole to say, Hey, Wash, it really sucks that I didn't feel Church dying. Say, have you had your weekly panic attack yet?
He feels the cushions shift as Wash sits down next to him, and Tucker thinks that if Wash is about to deliver some sort of earnest speech about I Know You Miss Your Friend, he's going to barf.
But Wash doesn't say anything. Just, after a few seconds, he puts his hand on the back of Tucker's neck, fingers curving under the edges of his implants, and it's. Well. It's actually sort of comforting to feel someone there, at the back of his head, where Church used to be.
He doesn't feel so much like he's falling anymore.
Beside him, Wash heaves a sigh. "I know you miss—"
"DUDE. DO NOT EVEN."