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Someone rang the bell at the bottom of the staircase. "UPS!" they said. Male. Mexican accent, Pike figured.
Pike opened the window. "I didn't order anything!" he shouted down. Whoever was at the door was hidden by the porch, despite the porch light. Pike was going to have to move again or else knock down that stupid porch. It was a real hazard to his life and his personal limbs.
"Hey, you don't want it, I'll take it! But you gotta sign!"
Pike scowled. "Where's your van?"
"Round the corner! Come on, man, let me up!"
The accent slipped, letting desperation through. Dead giveaway. "Fuck off, Benny!" Pike shouted. He stepped back and sagged onto his bed, staring at the open window.
Benny floated into view, bobbing gently in the breeze, bracing himself on the window frame. The neon sign across the street outlined his jacket in the dark. "Jeeez, Pike." Same whine. Same Benny, just dressed up in pointy ears and razor teeth. "Why do you have to be like that?"
"Because I enjoy being alive?" Not. Maybe in the abstract, anyway, but there wasn't a lot to enjoy about being stuck in southern California with no ride and no money and a crappy telemarketing job that was the only place that would give him strictly daylight hours, which was necessary because of his stalker vampire ex-best friend.
Oh, and no girl either, being that his and Buffy's bonding-through-vampire-slaying tax-bracket-violating experiment in romance had gone flat as a knifed tire as soon as the adrenaline wore off.
"Sure, Pike, I can see how happy you are. It's a laugh a minute at Casa De Pike." Which was exactly what Pike was thinking, but it pissed him off to hear Benny saying it out loud.
"You know, if you would just shut up and leave me alone, it just might be. Don't you have a grave to crawl into?"
Benny cocked his head, pouting. "I died on the rocks. I woke up drunk and hungry. No grave."
Pike clasped his hands behind his neck and stared at his knees. "If I dig you a grave, will you crawl in it?"
"If you come with me." Pike didn't have to look up to know that Benny was grinning. Because he knew him so, so well.
Benny was still *in* there. Buffy said the vampires weren't really human any more, but that was *Benny.* He *knew*. Better than he'd like to know. If he could pretend that it was just Benny's shell and not really him...he had a whole pile of stakes by the bed, and he was sure he could work something out.
But it was Benny. So every night for the past six months had gone something like this.
Pike was *tired.*
"I know a guy who plays the drums," Benny said.
"A vampire guy?"
"Yeah! We could start a band! The Living Dead! Come on!" He bobbed up and down with excitement.
"I don't want to start a band." God, Pike was tired. He was tired right down to his core.
Benny's hands scratching at his windowsill. His hands could cross over but his body couldn't, not unless Pike invited him. "Well, what *do* you want?"
"What do *you* want, Benny? What do you want from me?" Pike looked up again. Tired. Trapped. Emotional. Trying not to cry.
Macho, macho man. No tough girl this time to save him from the vampires. No Buffy to take the hard decisions out of his hands. Just him this time, him and the one vampire left in this rotten little town.
"The world!" Benny crowed, throwing his hands wide.
"Drop the act! Jesus!" Pike jumped to his feet. He stared down Benny eye to eye. "I've known you since you were nine! I *know* you."
"I want you." Benny's hands skittering over the wood; Benny's eyes wide and glittering and hungry.
"What? You want my ass, like you always pretend you don't? Huh?" Pike hovered just outside grabbing distance. Benny couldn't come in, but he could tug Pike *out*.
"I want your homemade vino," Benny said. He had a new grin now; the teeth rested outside his mouth, making every expression crooked and menacing. "And I want you."
"You can't have me." Pike slumped. Because there it was.
"I still want you. You're my best friend. You're my very bestest friend." Benny grinned again, a grin that should have been stupid and mock-flirty.
"You can't have me," Pike said again.
There were earplugs on his nightstand. He could pop them in and lay in bed and pretend Benny wasn't there. But it was only 5:30 at night and even *he* couldn't sleep that much...
He could cocoon on the couch with his VCR and the cable that was the only thing that kept him from going completely bugfuck crazy. He could wrap up in a blanket and pretend Benny wasn't there...
But Benny was there.
"I can do this all night," Benny said.
"You *do* do this all night."
"It's a tradition." Benny smiled, lolling his tongue like a dog.
Tired. So, so tired.
"If I give you something will you leave me alone?" Pike asked abruptly.
"Give me what? Keys to your van? Firstborn child? Your virginity?"
"Blood." And Pike was looking at him, eye to eye, and saw Benny's throat twitch at that. He saw his tongue dart out over his lips.
"You give me blood and I go away." Benny swallowed. His eyes glittered. "Okay."
"Okay? Deal?"
"Okay." Benny reached for him.
Pike looked at Benny, then down at himself. He unbuttoned the cuffs of the stupid awful dress shirt he had to wear to work. He peeled it off, leaving only the t-shirt and black pants.
Then he walked over to the window and gave Benny his arm.
Benny's teeth were sharp but they *hurt*. Not razor-sharp--needle-sharp, but bigger than needles, and *ripping* into his *skin*. His forearm, not his wrist like he expected, but that was okay. Easier to explain a scar there.
If he lived long enough to care. Benny's mouth was fixed over the wound and Benny's cold tongue was licking at the hot blood that oozed from it. Benny was room-temperature. Corpse-like. But Benny was also alive and licking Pike's blood, Jesus, and making those little yummy-grunts that he always made when he was eating pizza or sucking cock.
Pike's knees buckled. "I think I'm gonna hurl," he moaned.
Benny's hands curled around his arm. Benny crawled over the windowsill and sat in Pike's lap. "Don't do that," he said. He rubbed Pike's belly.
"I am, I really am, and you're inside my apartment. Why are you inside my apartment?"
"You invited me. Finally."
"I did not."
"You invited me with your whole body. It felt good." Blood welled up between Benny's fingers and he bent down to lick it up.
"I don't want you in my life, I want you out of my life..." But he was lying, of course, and God, this felt *good*. Not the biting part, but the holding part and the cuddling part--the whole *touching Benny* parts that he hadn't done for six months and hadn't done without for six years. "*Shit*," he said. From the heart. Crying.
"It's okay, Pike, I was lying!" Benny smiled and hugged him with the other arm, the arm that didn't have Pike's blood running down it. He rubbed the back of Pike's head like he always did, because it was less gay than kissing. Benny was too straight to kiss.
*Shit.*
Little Benny-caresses tickling over his scalp. A cop-out, but all that Benny could give him--
Pike leaned forward and kissed his lips. Gayly. Gayishly. Wanting-Benny-ishly. Not-giving-a-fuck-ishly.
Glad-Benny-was-home-ishly.
Not-wanting-him-to-leave-ishly.
Other things there weren't words for, unless "love" covered it, which it might.
He'd tasted his own blood before, but it was different from Benny's mouth. He hooked an arm around Benny's cold neck. He was still crying, a little. "Benny."
"Pike."
"Whatever it is you do to change people, don't do it, okay?"
"Okay," Benny said, smiling with blood-smeared teeth.
end.