Y: The Last Man: Only Hold Her

[martianhouse]

Title: Only Hold Her
Author: schmevil
Summary: 355 teaches Yorick to knit.
Characters: 355/Yorick
Word Count: 4669
Notes: For goobalicious as part of help_haiti.

They were in a small town, just big enough to deserve a name. She knew the name, along with its current (and former) population, and its major industries and exports. It was a Midwestern town, with all that implied. Through it, ran both the highway and well-cared for railroad tracks, though neither were seeing much traffic. These days, the women of Salience spent their time working the fields in the day, and their homes at night. All of them worked double and triple duty. Many had abandoned their former homes, in favour of shacking up together. It only made good sense. When the travelers came, (and when there were travelers they came through Salience), they had plenty of space to rent out.

The three of them rented a small cottage. They paid for it in labour for the women up at the main house and in the town. Yorick did small chores around the house, and proved to be as good at fixing locks as picking them. For once - small mercy - he was wise enough to pass on anything that could potentially demonstrate his manliness (as he liked to call it, or alternately: packing y). Allison was drafted to do checkups and spent more time crashing on one of the cots in the town hall, than she did in the house. And Peace, well, she did odd jobs and watched Yorick.

He and Peace sat on the floor, at the coffee table. There was no couch; apparently it had been donated to the town hall. She'd sat down at one end, with her yarn and needles, and then he'd claimed one of the long sides, and spread out the slim roll of his lock-picks, and a deck of cards. While she knitted, he alternated checking his equipment and fiddling with the cards.

"Go fish?" he asked?

"No thanks." She held up her needles.

"I'll just play for you then."

"How's that going to work?"

He squinted at the deck, and started dealing. "Very carefully." Yorick lined her cards cup in front of her, face up, in a neat, overlapping fishtail. He held his cards close, and leaned forward on his elbows.

"You've got a mean hand there." She grinned, shrugged, kept on knitting. Her needles clicked together softly, but it was loud in the cabin. No appliances running, and no Allison around to heckle Yorick. "Nines," Yorick declared. He tugged one out of her pile, and set it down with his.

"Sevens," she said.

He scowled at her, but tossed down two. "Oh, now you want to play."

"With that kind of hand?" Two sets of doubles from the start - of course she'd take the opportunity to humiliate him.

Ampersand gurgled a string of vowels in his sleep. They both looked to where he was sleeping. He squealed and clawed the air with his paws.

"Shh, it's okay Amp. Go back to sleep," coaxed Yorick, rubbing the capuchin's belly gently. Post-feeding, Ampersand was usually pretty agreeable. He'd collapsed against Yorick's side and quickly slipped into a deep sleep. One small paw shot out and gripped Yorick's hand. He let Ampersand pull it down, so it was curled around his middle, Yorick's thumb tracing circles against Amp's fur.

"Three-Fifty?"

"What?" Peace looked up, startled. Yorick was staring at her, confused or embarrassed. He'd caught her watching him. "Sevens," she said again. He nodded, and handed his over.

Sometimes she felt like she would spend her whole life watching Yorick. Watching after him, or just watching him. Allison did it too, and Mrs. Brown, and anyone who knew. How could you not? That's what she told herself, that anyone who knew couldn't help but watch the last man alive. Anyone would know by heart, the line of his throat when he tipped his head back to drink. Anyone would watch the same card tricks, over and over, without trying to learn them. Anyone would catalog the noises he made in his sleep; which ones meant a good dream, and which ones bad.

The thing was, it was her job to notice things, and to notice things about Yorick. There was difficult, there was impossible, and then there was Yorick. That the last man had to be a pig stubborn, fiercely loyal, amateur magician, with a heart of pudding was just the icing on her cake. She noticed things, but between the three of them they had everything on their shoulders. It was her job to keep on remembering that, and not compartmentalize like Yorick. It was her job to always be on the job, always keep Yorick and Allison - their best hope - alive and in reasonably good working order.

So she noticed things. Like how long his fingers were, and how the tendons in his arms flexed when he shuffled quick. How he made it look easy and casual, because he was that practiced.

"Knitting."

"What?" Yorick asked. He didn't look up from his cards. He stared at them intently, as though there were strategic moves to be made in go fish.

"You'd be good at it," she said, a bit sheepishly.

"What makes you think that?" Yorick looked up, genuinely curious, she thought.

"You have good hands."

His mouth worked silently for a second or two, not long, but he was easy enough to read, most of the time. He didn't know what to do with that. Finally, his expression settled into a coy smirk. "Why Three-Fifty," he said, batting his lashes at her. It was so camp, she couldn't at all take it seriously, and yet, was there something more to it? Like what, Three-Fifty, boredom? Silliness? Yorick being Yorick, and needing to be liked?

"I could teach you," she said, impulsively. Against her best instincts, really.

He looked up from the cards, his expression not at all casual. "Hey, that's your thing. I don't want to..."

"If you're not interested-"

"No, I... it's cool. Teach me."

"All right," she said. She pulled another set of needles from her bag, and a ball of yarn. He scooched around the table, to sit in front of her, with his legs crossed. She handed over the needles. He held them all wrong. His grip was too tight and the angle off. "No, like-" She demonstrated with her own needles. He shifted his grip but it was still too tight; he'd never get anywhere like that.

Peace put down her needles and reached for Yorick's. She moved his hands into place. "Ok, now stay there."

"Yes, ma'am."

She unwound a length of yarn. "Start with a slip knot." He nodded. Yorick knew more about knots than (almost) anyone she knew. "Now slip the left needle in." She held it up for him, and he pushed the needle through the loop. He watched her wind the yarn around the needle, and then his thumb. She'd been knitting long enough to do it in the dark, blindfolded, so she didn't watch their hands - she watched him. The tip of his tongue peaking out of the corner of his mouth. His Adam's apple bobbing when he swallowed.

"So does the other needle just hang out over here, lonely and useless?"

"Patience-"

"Grasshopper."

"Yorick."

"Sorry," he said, grinning.

She finished casting off, and took his other hand in hers. "Slip your sad and lonely needle through the first loop." She guided him through the first few steps, then let go, so he was doing it on his own. "Keep the tip of the right needle behind the left," she reminded him. He nodded, his look grave. His tongue was sticking out again. She watched him while he worked way through the first, second and third rows, giving only minimal instruction and the occasional reminder. "You're knitting."

"I guess I am," he said. "What's this called?"

"A garter stitch."

"Cool," he said, looking back to his work.

"We should really get dinner together."

"The wrath of Dr. Mann will indeed be mighty, if she comes home from a hard day's work to find us sitting on our asses." Yorick set down his needles and surveyed the table. Ampersand was still asleep on the floor, but leaving things as they were was just asking for him to steal half of Yorick's picks, and at least one ball of yarn. Possibly all of them, if he could manage. They quickly tided things up, keeping one eye on Ampersand. He twitched in his sleep; that usually meant he was waking.

"You should bind off," she said.

"Show me, Jedi Master Three-Fifty." He held out his hands, palm up. She dropped the needles back into his hands. He adjusted his grip without being reminded to.

"Ok, so..." She laid out the basics for him, but quickly found that it was just as easy to explain it with her hands. Most of the time, Yorick talked too much. His verbal diarrhea had at first been the bane of her existence, but somewhere along the way, she'd come to find it charming. To babble back. But this was nice too. She found herself guiding his hands through it, her hands shadowing his.

"Three-fifty?"

"Yeah?"

"What are you knitting, anyway?"

"What?" Her hands went still on his. Amateur move, Peace. What exactly was it that she'd carted from town to town, all through this never-ending road trip - it was a good question. Just not one she wanted to answer. It's just a scarf. She looked up. "It's... just a scarf." Yorick wasn't a half bad judge of character, when he didn't let his idealism get in the way, and while he wasn't going to find out all of her secrets today (or any other day), she sure wasn't doing much to ensure he'd continue in the dark about this one. She forced her hands to start moving again, to move his through the stitches.

She dared a glance, from beneath her eyelashes, and the braids that had fallen in front of her face.

He was staring at her, but not quite meeting her eyes. Did he-

"Doesn't seem like your colour."

"It's not," she said - and this was ridiculous - a little breathlessly.

"Three-Fifty..." My name is Peace, she wanted to say, but that, oh that was a step too far. Instead she looked to catch his gaze, long enough to see his eyes wide, and stunned. She meant to hold him there, but he seemed for once, so earnest, so fully focused on her. She looked down.

Did he know? Could he possibly--

There had been moments. Times where she'd thought, he must know, he must feel at least a little bit the same. Peace hadn't had a normal childhood, and she'd missed out on all the hormonally-driven high school drama that formed the basis of most people's adult dysfunctions. She'd never really gone there, and most of the time that was fine by her - she had a job to do, and crushes had no part in that. There was, on the other hand, another part of her that curled inwards, that warmed at the thought that he might possibly see-know-feel the same way. Neither of them were kids though, and there was a lot more at stake than a crush, or her possible (likely) rejected embarrassment.

Peace could feel the weight of his stare, as he worked things out, and she just floundered, knowing she should do something to manage the situation.

They were a team, Peace, Allison and Yorick. And Ampersand, maybe - he had his moments. That wasn't how they'd started out this road trip, but it was what they'd become. Allison was the best girlfriend she'd ever had, and Yorick was... what he was. She certainly hadn't gone looking for friends, at the start. She'd had a job to do, and still did. Whenever Allison was endearingly curmudgeonly, or Yorick surprised her with his quick wit and sweetness, that's what she told herself. She had a job to do. Only, months and months of just the three of them, against the world, against Amazons, and self-interested girls (children, some of them), changed things. For long stretches of time it was just them, huddled in a tent, or a shitty room, hoping that they'd make it out of this town, this city, this backwoods region, alive and with all their secrets.

They had secrets of their own, all of them, and things were never perfect, but it was the first time she could remember - since this life started - that she felt like she was part of... a family. Which was crazy, obviously, but there were times when it felt just like that, like they were a post-plague parody of a nuclear family. Enough so that they could joke about it: Allison and 355 and baby Yorick makes three. Four really, because you had to count Ampersand. But Peace, she didn't feel like Yorick's mother, fool that he was.

She worried that those moments were all in her head. That she was just a replacement for Hero. She worried too that they weren't, because for all their secrets and ridiculous internal dramas (Allison and Yorick were meant to know each other, no matter what they said), they were a stable configuration. They were a team, and she had to consider that. She couldn't think about it, about the possibility of it, without that context, or the greater one of her job, and Allison's, and Yorick's duty. To think about it, to give the fantasy even such short legs, was to lend it some measure of possibility; some sense of reality. And even putting all of that aside, there was Yorick's driving force, his reward at the end of the rainbow, which was his maybe-fiancee. Pretty blonde and blue-eyed Beth, the love of his life.

And yet-- she wanted to have this.

"Three-Fifty," Yorick said again, leaning in close. There was still the table between them. Their hands, she remembered. She moved to pull away, but he dropped the needles and pushed his fingers between hers. She yanked her hands free, thinking, this was Yorick, and maybe this was just a moment of weakness; a pothole in the long road back to Beth. She pulled back, but he just followed her, his breath hot on her cheek and then-- he stopped.

Beth, she thought. Or the other Beth. Or one of a million reasons, including that he was a coward, when it came to the things he really wanted. She looked up and he was staring at her mouth, her lips, but he wasn't doing anything - and that was it. She moved.

Leaned into him and took hold of him at the same time. Their lips crashed together, too hard at first, teeth in the way and hands in all the wrong places. He made this strangled noise, that quickly turned into a whisper - breathing her name against her open lips. Her fingers curled, hands turning to fists in his shirt, and pulled him up to his knees. He came willingly, so willingly, his own hands settling on her face, tilting it just so.

Part of her - she wasn't sure which, the rational or the cowardly - was screaming out all the ways in which this was a terrible idea, even as she kneeled up. As they both, without looking, pushed their neatly put away toys off the table; her needles and yarn; his lock picks and cards. Beth, of course, but also Ampersand, who was somehow managing to sleep through all of this, and Allison, who was due home any minute. That was a good excuse: Allison. She almost listened to that one.

Then he reached up, pushed her braids back away from her face, and kissed her. Her cheek, just shy of her lips. Her jawline, and just below her ear. "Beautiful." And so they kissed, half-sitting on the ragged old coffee table, hands entangled, Ampersand asleep on the floor beside them. She learned the feel of him, as thoroughly as she knew the sight of him. She kept trying to file it away, and he kept distracting her, keeping her completely, carelessly, in the moment.

After a while, where Peace left her objections behind and just felt, and took, Ampersand stirred, awake. For good this time. He immediately screeched out his version of "Hello, I am happy to see you. Where is the food?" They both jumped, making the coffee table creak. Peace turned her face from his, and this time it was Yorick who held on.

"He has the worst timing," Yorick said into her hair.

"Allison will be home soon, though."

"I guess that's a point." He swept his hands down her shoulders, arms, and then let go. She shifted away from him, and adjusted her clothes. "Early warning system capuchin?" Ampersand bobbed his head, and his tail swung from side to side. He might actually be agreeing - capuchins, and Amp in particular were smart - or he might be angling for a treat.

Peace got up and collected the scattered remains of their work-free afternoon. The lock picks and cards went in Yorick's pack. The needles and yarn in hers. Yorick, meanwhile headed for the kitchen, Ampersand in tow. He might not be a great cook, but he was competent. He could add water and reheat. She paused over the second set of needles, and the bright yellow yarn that Yorick had knitted into the beginnings of something.

"Do you want soup for dinner? Or soup?"

"Soup sounds perfect," she answered. She jabbed the needles through the center of the yarn, and stuffed the ball into Yorick's pack, zipping it closed. "Do we still have those beans?" she asked, retreating into easy domesticity. He took the hint and followed her. She quashed the spike of disappointment, that it was so easy to pretend like nothing had happened.

"Yeah, but I thought we were saving them for desperate times." Yorick was busy opening cans, and trying to see past Ampersand's waving paws, and didn't look up when she came into the kitchen.

"Doreen promised Allison fresh supplies."

"Cool." He set down the can of beans, and looked out the window. The seriousness of his expression was marred by Ampersand perched on his shoulder, and hanging onto his neck with one paw. She wanted to laugh, but- "Three-Fifty, I-"

"We can talk about this later, Yorick."

"No, I. I'm not panicking, if that's what you're thinking, and... we don't have to have a serious talk, if you don't want to. I just wanted to say-"

"Really, it's fine."

"That I liked it," Yorick said, a thread of panic in his voice.

"What?"

"And that you're beautiful." He smiled at her, a tortured smile that was anything but attractive. She possibly felt a little weak in the knees. She'd never had this, never had any declarations. "You're my best friend, and I love you, and you're beautiful."

She swallowed hard, and stared at the idiot, monkey hanging from his neck, expecting a response. Time to woman up. "I love you too."

"So," he said. "That's... that's good." He held the can opener with one hand. His other came up between them, and she took it loosely. "We should probably still talk later?"

"That would be good, Yorick."

"You do know you're going to be the grown up in this thing, right?"

"Well," she said. "I figure, I already wear the pants - what's the difference?"

He scowled. "Fine then. Open these cans for me woman, so I can make you dinner." So she did.

Soon after, Allison came home. She complained about her day, and the stupidity of middle America, and middle Americans. She complained about the lack of supplies, and looked stealthily heartbroken throughout. It was par for the course, for their time in Salience, and Peace was happy to have her complaints for once. She didn't seem to notice anything strange between them, and that made things easier.

Finally, when it was just the two of them, when the dishes were done, and Allison and Ampersand were both asleep, they sat down together, on the steps of the cabin. It was a quiet night, just the outdoor sounds that were becoming increasingly normal to her city-raised ears. There was only half a moon, but it provided more than enough light, with nothing electric to compete with it. While there was electricity in the town center, and even in some of the closer houses, they hadn't managed to get this far with infrastructure repairs. Salience had been hit hard by the struggles that followed the plague, but they were clawing things back for themselves.

It was a quiet region, politically speaking, the neighboring towns having formed an alliance with Salience, and driven out the worst elements. They were as safe as Peace could imagine them being, outside of a safe house, or a panic room. That meant she didn't have the excuse of a perimeter walk.

"So," he said.

I'm a Culper Ring agent first. What about Beth? The words stuck in her throat. She found that she wanted this, despite everything; whatever this turned out to be. It would probably be better for them, for everyone, if it was just two friends who loved each other, and took care of each others needs. That's how it was supposed to work for people like her. She didn't know exactly how to dream bigger than that, except through others: Allison figuring things out and bringing back the men; Yorick getting his happy ending with Beth. She wanted all of that as much as they did.

When she said nothing - she didn't know yet, what words would come out when she did speak - he said her name. "Three-Fifty." With all the panic and breathlessness of that afternoon. She remembered suddenly, the taste of him, the feel of him.

"Peace," she said.

"What?"

"My name. It's Peace."

"Oh." He was quiet for a long time. "So your parents were hippies?"

"I tell you my real name and you come back with, 'your parents were hippies'?"

"Kidding!" She drove an elbow into his ribs. "Ow, Jesus. Have I ever told you that you have really pointy elbows?"

"No, I don't think it's come up."

"Well you do."

"I'll keep that in mind," she said with a smile. This was it, she thought. This was the thing about Yorick, how he could make things brighter. The load didn't go away, and neither did any of the rest of it, but he would tell an awful joke, or act the fool - though sometimes there wasn't much acting involved - and things would be brighter. This whole range of possibilities would open up, alien to her way of thinking, and to Allison's. This was the thing about him. For all his hangups, and maddening heroic and/or suicidal tendencies, he gave them something, the idea that they could do this, save the world and then retire to a (somewhat) happily ever after. They'd get together on weekends and play DDR. A geneticist, a spy, and an escape artist: together they save the world. Yorick made it easy to believe in.

"Listen," he said. "I know it's complicated. Maybe too complicated, and possibly a little incestuous. We're on a mission from God here," he said with a grin. "And I don't want to screw things up. It's just, I spent the whole night thinking about this."

"Really? I thought you spent the whole night talking about the relative merits of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin."

"Hey, I'm perfectly capable of carrying on two streams of completely unrelated thought. I am the rare man who can multi-task."

"You're incredible," she said.

He mock-frowned at her. "I should never have taught you how to snark." She opened her mouth to refute that, but he held up his hand. "Shush, now. The man is talking."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah, really," He said with a grin. "Yeah." He looked down at his hands then, seemingly searching for something. She let him have his time, and the silence take over.

"I'm not good at this," he finally said. "I get too involved, too quickly. It's not like I don't know that about myself." He looked at her, earnest and laser-focused on her again. "But I've been thinking about this all night, and I want it."

"You... want what, Yorick? If we're going to have this conversation, we might as well have it." As if she wasn't dodging things as much as he was. "Allison's work comes first. Your and Ampersand's safety comes first."

"I know. Fate of the world, and all that jazz. I do get that. Being the last dude, it's hard for me not to."

"I know you do."

"There's more to life than that. There's more than duty. Look, I don't know how it's going to be when this is all over, but right now, it's the three of us. I still, I love Beth," he said, and she was surprised at how much that didn't hurt. It was an eternal fact of their existence: Yorick loved Beth.

"But you're my best friend," he said again. "You've saved my life more times than I can count, and you laugh at my jokes most of the time, and you taught me to knit. You told me your real name, Peace, and I wish I had something as special to give you back." He placed his hand her knee, his fingers brushing against hers. It was a skittish move, hardly an advance at all, save for the fact that their touches were usually wholly casual, or life and death. "You're an amazing woman, and to be honest, I'm probably not even in your league."

"Yorick-"

"I'm not trying to make this about me and my issues, Dr. Three-Fifty. What I'm saying is, in any other lifetime, we would never have met. All I have is my tricks, my monkey and my sad skinny ass, and you're a super-spy. But we did meet, and we're stuck together, and strangest of all," he said with a rueful smile. "We're kind of good together. So what I'm saying is, if you want to be friends with benefits, then I can do that. Hell, I'd... kind of love to do that."

"Oh," she said.

"Is that a positive, or a negative 'oh'?"

"Positive?" she said weakly.

"Ok," he said. Yorick sighed. "I thought this would be harder to say. I mean, I'm not kidding, I thought about this all afternoon." She laughed. "What?"

"So did I."

"Really?"

"Really," she said, linking her fingers with his.

"This is going to be awkward, and sometimes emo, isn't it."

"Probably," she agreed.

"Just as long as we're on the same page," he said. There was more in that than he was saying - the same page. As if friends with benefits could be so easy. There was a reason that the Culper Ring trained its operatives not to get too involved with civilians. Especially civilians they were assigned to. As if Beth could be so easily swept aside - a non-issue because they were best friends, who were living in the moment, and everything was fine. But Yorick wasn't nearly as stupid as he sometimes acted. He was book-smart, and clever, and he understood people in a way she didn't. She in turn knew things that he didn't, and that she never wanted him to know.

So were they on the same terrifying page? It was impossible to say. Not without more heartfelt discussions than either of them could stand, and even then, between an escape artist and a secret agent, there was so much room for obfuscation. But the thing was, she wanted, and so did he.

"There's more than duty," she said, leaning in towards him.

"Yeah," he said, his voice low.

Fuck it, she told herself. And then she just went for it.

END