//BREAKS INTO UR BLOG STEPHANIE MARIE ANN MARY RENEE BROWN I WOULD LIKE TO FORMALLY REQUEST THAT TOU FIX DEPRIVATION IMMEDIATELY I AM ALSO FORMALLY REQUESTING TUCKINGTON SNUGGLES AND TUCKER FEEDING WASH FOOD AND HOLDING HIM THROUGH PANIC ATTACKS PLEASE AND THANK YOU
plenitude
again, I think it’s important to preserve @hakanakiki exact wording for all eternity. Sequel to the (first place for mods!) entry for Angst War, deprivation. Not quite Tuckington; but I think they’re working on it. ;)
Warnings for: Past captivity, brainwashing, abuse
Also on Ao3
The first time Wash has apanic attack after they rescue him, he accidentally gets locked in a broomcloset. They’re not sure what he was doingin there—he wanders a lot when he can’t be with Tucker or Grif, and it’snot the first time someone’s found him in a weird place, but it’s the firsttime someone’s accidentally locked him in.
The minute the doorcloses and the lights are switched off, they start to hear the sobbing.
It’s one of the cadetswho closed the door and flipped the switch to leave Wash in total darkness, andthey freak out immediately and run to get Tucker, because Agent Washington iscurled up on the ground and whimpering and crying and they don’t know what todo.
Tucker’s there in aninstant.
They haven’t found thebase where Felix and Locus kept Wash yet, but Tucker and the others have piecedthings together. It seemed to have involved a complicated system of punishmentsand rewards, and a bunch of signals that they don’t know but Wash is constantlyreceiving.
It appears being lockedin a small, dark room was one of the punishments.
The door hadn’t even beenlocked; the door doesn’t lock at all, but it’s not like Wash tried thedoorknob. There are burn marks on his hands, old scars now, but they’recircular, and Grey has guessed that Wash tried to open doorknobs with a largeamount of electricity coursing through them to convince Wash never to try toopen a closed door.
Wash isn’t sobbinganymore, but he’s shaking on the floor, curled up on his side, his breathcoming in sharp, painful sounding gasps. Tucker instinctively falls to hisknees in reaches out towards Wash. Wash looks up at him, and his mouth fallsopen, making those little noises he makes when he’s really scared, ones that almost sound like he’s trying to beg notto be hurt again. And he’s looking at Tucker with those eyes, with thatexpression, and Tucker knows that this is the way he looked at Locus when hewas being punished. In this moment, there is no difference between him andLocus, and it makes Tucker sick to his stomach.
Tucker hates those noisesand that expression more than just about anything, right now. He reaches out,and Wash flinches back, only to freeze up when Tucker starts petting his hair. Tuckerruns his fingers through Wash’s locks—damp with sweat, dirty because they’restill not sure if they can let him to take a shower on his own, but still softto the touch, blonde streaked with grey—and doesn’t say anything, just keepshis hand there, a warm and comforting presence.
Wash lets out a whimper,and tentatively presses up into the pressure. Tucker keeps going, carefullyadjusting the way he’s sitting so his legs are stretched out, like he wasdealing with a cat. Slowly, as Wash starts to relax, his face still shiny withtears, Tucker pulls Wash towards him, until Wash is seated in his lap, facepressed into Tucker’s shoulder, Tucker’s hand carding through Wash’s hair, whilehis other hand rubs circles into his back.
“It was just an accident,okay?” Tucker whispers, even though he’s not remotely sure Wash even canunderstand them. Grey has concerns about permanent damage to Wash’s languageprocessing centers because of the drugs they filled him with—she’s waiting forthe results from the bloodwork before making any conclusions. None of them haveheard Wash say a single word since he’d yelled Tucker’s name on that call, aresponse that Tucker knows now had to be a conditioned one. Wash had to havebeen almost completely, if not completelycompletely, under their control by that time. The timeline doesn’t work outotherwise.
It doesn’t mean that the waythat Wash had screamed his name is going to stop haunting Tucker’s nightmaresanytime soon though.
Wash lets out a few morenoises, but these ones are almost questioning. Maybe he does understand.
“They didn’t realize youwere in here, Wash,” he says, as soothingly as he can manage when all he wantsto do is bring Locus back to life so he can kill him slower this time. Thatfucker didn’t deserve a quick death. He deserves to hurt as much as Wash ishurting now. “They didn’t mean to lock you in. You didn’t do anything bad. You’renot being punished. I wouldn’t… I promise you, no one’s going to lock you uplike that again, okay? No one. Not ever. I won’t let them.”
Wash shudders in hisgrip, and his hands fist suddenly in Tucker’s shirt, as if trying to pull himeven closer.
Tucker hooks his chin onWash’s head, and feels Wash’s breathing slowly steady out beneath him as hestops shaking.
“It’s going to be okayWash,” he says. “It’s all going to be okay.”
Wash wakes up taking agasping, shuddering breath. There’s an arm thrown over his chest, pulling himagainst a warm body, and immediately he relaxes.
His first instinct is tocheck to make sure no one noticed he wasn’t being still, but then he remembers.
This is Tucker holdinghim, this is Tucker snoring softly, pressed against him to give him comfort.Tucker, who pulled him out of the snow and helped change his armor and yelledat him in a canyon.
Locus is dead. There isno one to punish Wash for tossing and turning at night or waking up screaming.
Wash can wake up howeverhe wants to now.
His stomach growls, andWash hesitates. He has options right now. He could wait until morning, like hisinstincts, honed by Locus and Felix tell him to. He could wake up Tucker andask for help.
Or…
Wash carefully shifts Tucker’sarm so as not to disturb him, and creeps down the hallway towards one of theplaces on the base where he knows he’ll be able to find food, even at thishour.
There’s not a lot of options;protein bars, a few basic sweets, some fruit that Wash instinctively avoids,even now that there’s no Felix or Locus to inflict those punishments.
He picks up a basicration bar; they weren’t punishment food or reward food. It just indicatedanother night alone in his cell, which is fine, because he’s going back toTucker right after this.
His hands are shaking ashe removes the wrapper, but he is going to dothis. He lifts the bar to his mouth and takes as small a bite as he canmanage.
Grey’s the one who findshim, curled up around the sink in the kitchen, sweating and pale and vomiting.
“I’m sorry, Agent Washington,”she says sympathetically. This late at night, she’s not in her armor, whichWash still finds to be a source of relief. Armor is still hard, especiallyarmor with bright colors.
“Stupid,” he mutters. “Ican’t even eat on my own.”
“You’re getting there,”she tells him, placing her hand on his back. Wash lets out a pathetic soundingwhimper at that. “You’re doing so well, Wash. You’re ahead of schedule, Ipromise you. Eating food only when it’s provided by your handler was one of thefirst elements of your conditioning. You’re not going to throw it off quickly.”
“I hate it,” Wash says, knucklespale against the porcelain of the sink. “I hate it, I hate it, I hate—”
“Do you want me to wakeTucker up? Grif’s awake if you’d rather not. You should eat something.”
“You have the recording?”Wash mutters, cheeks red. He just counts himself lucky that Grif took beingassigned the role of secondary handler and trainer so well.
“Of course!” She says. “Let’sgo find him then.” She takes her hand away and Wash bites his lip to stophimself from protesting. She notices anyways—because of course she does, andsmiles at him, placing her hand on the small of his back as they walk down thehall.
It’s another thing thatreminds Wash that he’s no longer Charon’s weapon; even on his best behavior, he’dnever be allowed this. Especially notright after he’d tried to eat food from somewhere that wasn’t Locus’s hand. OrTucker’s. Because Locus was dead.
Grif is lying on a couchin one of the common areas, not asleep. He sits up when he sees them, onlyslightly, but enough that it’s an acknowledgement of their presence. “What didyou do this time?” He asks, and Wash flinches slightly, almost expecting aslap, even though Grif has never done anything to deserve that.
“He tried to eat on hisown, Captain Grif! Would you mind?” Grey handed over a small plastic bag fullof food to Grif. Wash hadn’t noticed when she’d grabbed that. Had she had thatthe whole time?
Grif sighs loudly, but hetakes the bag and starts fiddling through it. “What do you want, Wash? There’schocolate in here—seriously? I can’tfind this stuff in the commissary, have you been fucking hoarding it?”
“Ahem,” Grey says reproachfully.
“Right, fine. What do youwant?”
“Just granola,” Washmutters. His stomach is too delicate to handle anything rich, although he desperatelywants chocolate.
Grif looks at Grey, whopulls out the small remote, and presses the button.
“You can eat with Grif,”Tucker’s voice says, tinny and small, but enough to convince Wash’s brain thatthis is okay, this is allowed.
Grif holds it out at faceheight, and Wash leans forward and takes a bite. Once he’s done with the wholething, he drinks water from the bottle Grey hands him, and heads to bed, takingthe bag of food with him, but leaving the chocolate behind for Grif.
Tucker’s awake, lookingat him with concern. “You okay?”
“Fine,” Wash says. Tuckerwill hear about the food thing in the morning. Wash doesn’t want to talk aboutit anymore; he just wants to go back to sleep.
Wash gets back into bed—Tuckertechnically has his own room, but ever since Wash figured out talking again,Tucker spends every night here, holding Wash through the nightmares, providinghim with the physical contact Wash has been starving for since long beforeFelix and Locus captured him.
Wash buries his face inthe crook of Tucker’s neck and lets Tucker wrap his arms around him. Tuckerpresses a kiss against his forehead, and Wash takes deep breaths, trying toground himself.
“Goodnight,” he says,just to prove to himself that he can stillspeak, that this is something that he knows how to do.
hakanakikiki replied to your post “I’ve been thinking about this for a while now and whether I should…”
LISTEN!! You keep doing what you love, and I will fight the haters because like literally everything you make is a masterpiece??? I had never cried over gifsets before your work!! 💙💙💙💙💙
Aw thank you so much, both for the encouragement and also the huge smile your reply (& all your tags, like ever) gave me! ❤️❤️
Gosh hmm... I enjoy lots of things. Hiking and star gazing are my top two. During August I like to watch the meteor showers! =D
do you like camping?
Sooort of? I don’t enjoy going to camp grounds all that much I find them boring, also went to a lot of them with my dad and his at the time SHITTY GIRLFRIEND so I don’t have good memories of them.
BUT the one time I went on a four day, three night camping/hiking trip in Thailand as part of a meditation course? That was awesome.
Except for the part where on the last night the volunteers pitched my tent on rocks that sucked.
what would you spend $1,000 on?
Right now? Rent and food.
what’s your job, or what do you want to do as your job?
Well i’m currently a student looking for part time employment. :’u But I WILL be an animator! One day soon!
Very First Impression: oh shit this is an Excellent post concerning Tucker IM GLAD MY EYES HAVE BEEN BLESSED WITH THIS A MERE HOUR AFTER ENTERING THIS FANDOM! First Impression: Red who is also a Blue who is also wait whaaaat idk they're awesome Now: MY WIFE!!!!!!
A MERE HOUR OSIGSIUGH SHUT UP NO WAY WERE YOU THAT FRESH
CALLOUT POST: Refuses to acknowledge the letter w, LOOKS TOO DAMN CUTE IN FALL CLOTHES, IS ALSO TOO FAR FOR HUGS, and also puts Wash in a box with ALARMING frequency
